Welcome back to the picturesque Scottish sea-side resort of Lobster Bay! Christmas at Lobster Bay begins some months after the events in book one, The Guesthouse at Lobster Bay, in which Emma decided to leave her life in London behind and pursue her dream of running a guest house in the tiny Scottish resort of Lobster Bay, finding love, friendship, and the community spirit she was looking for to make her whole again.

Emma has made a great success of her guesthouse venture, and things are now running smoothly with her faithful team around her, including her boyfriend Aiden, but instead of feeling content with her lot she finds herself a bit restless. Aiden is baffled by Emma's need for something more, but when they decide to expand the guesthouse to incorporate his house next door it seems the perfect project to give Emma the challenge she is looking for. 

However, things soon become a bit more a challenge than Emma had in mind, when the project runs into trouble that could spell disaster for all Emma's plans... and her future with Aiden. As structural issues, an errant puppy, and relationship and friendship complications all add to the mounting toll of problems, Emma begins to wonder if uprooting her life and moving to Lobster Bay was the right thing to do. Can she get her dreams back on track?

I absolutely loved the first book in this series and could not wait to meet up with the Lobster Bay gang once again in this fabulous second instalment of Emma's story. Things are going well for Emma on the guesthouse, relationship and friendship front, but fate decides to throw a huge spanner in all the works when Emma's restlessness leads her to take on a project that almost spells disaster for her dream of happily ever after in Lobster Bay. There are laughs and tears a-plenty in this story as the mishaps and misunderstandings serve to tie all the threads together into a knot that is seems impossible to unpick, but of course, as in all the best rom-coms everything sorts itself out in one gorgeous heart-warming ending that is all the better for being in such a wonderful setting at Christmas time.

All my favourite characters are here again, and there are also some new faces to mix things up nicely and give the fabulous narrator Eilidh Beaton a challenge on the regional accent front, which she pulls off in the accomplished way that makes her one of my favourite voice actors: her storytelling held me spellbound from beginning to end, evoking all the feels as she told Annie Robertson's lovely tale of what comes with trying to balance all sides of life and recognising when everything you need has been right there in front of you the whole time. 

I just love the way Robertson manages to deliver a tale about friendship, family, and love, with such a lovely cast of characters of all ages coping with the pressures that come with modern life, bringing in issues around mental health, communication, coping with loss, managing expectation, and overcoming family trauma in a way that makes them engaging and relatable. I am not ashamed to say that much sobbing, of the happy and sad variety, happened while I listened to this audio book, and I loved every teary minute.

I have my fingers crossed that Robertson will decide to pay a visit to Lobster Bay again in the future, because my heart lies firmly in that little Scottish sea-side town with all its human, and animal, residents.