My last book of the year was The Secret Christmas Library, by Jenny Colgan, and I almost didn’t read it. I usually love discovering a new Colgan book, especially the ones that take place up in the wilds of Scotland (which this did), but then I found out it was a sequel to last year’s novella The Christmas Book Hunt, which wasn’t one of my favorites because of the exceedingly obnoxious male lead and, sure enough, that character was equally distasteful in this one.

Fortunately, he wasn’t the only guy on the scene for Mirren, the female lead in both, to moon over, but it took about 85 percent of the story to get to the romance. The setting and atmosphere saved it for me, since it took place in a remote rundown castle on a loch, with its own train stop and maze, and had a resident poverty-stricken laird in search of a rare book hidden somewhere in the “pile.”

The major bone I had to pick with this one was the lack of editing and proofreading. I came across at least five misspellings and/or misuses of words, and it was also apparent that neither the author nor the editor had gone back and perused the work for repetition; on the very first page there was a sentence repeated verbatim twice, just two paragraphs apart, and about 30 pages later she used the word “immaculate” to describe three separate things, again all on one page. The overall impression was that this was dashed off to satisfy the holiday market.

Colgan has written many Christmas books (most as sequels to various series), and any of those is preferable.