Michelle Griep returns with Belle’s Christmas Carol, a festive Regency novella set amid the snow-dusted streets of 1820 London, where the atmosphere crackles with all the warmth and wonder of a Dickensian Christmas. Griep’s Christmas novellas have already captured more than 45,000 readers, and this latest offering showcases what makes her holiday fiction so beloved: exquisite historical atmosphere, mischievous charm, and a romance that sneaks up on you while you’re not looking.
FF: What inspired you to put a fresh spin on A Christmas Carol for Belle’s Christmas Carol?
All right. I’ll admit it right here, right now. I’m a Dickens afficionado . . . to the point that I named my dog Ada Clare in honor of a character in Bleak House (my favorite Dickens book). But, back to A Christmas Carol, I always felt horrible for Belle when she dumped Scrooge because it’s sad to see love take such a drastic U-turn. I merely decided to give her the happy ending she deserved, and so a new story was born.
FF: Setting the story in a London orphanage adds an emotional layer—what led you to that setting?
Scrooge seemed like an orphan to me in the way he was left at the boarding school. Poor little buddy. That gave me the seed to set the story at an actual orphanage and add in a little boy who really was an orphan.
FF: How did you balance staying true to the spirit of Dickens’s classic while making the story your own?
Setting the tale in a completely different timeframe than A Christmas Carol helped a lot in giving this story a flavor of its own. So did rewinding the clock on old Scrooge and featuring him in the prime of his life. My aim was to keep the spirit of Dickens in giving some of the characters quirky names and even quirkier traits—hence the caretakers of Haven House—and also to remain true to the Victorian Christmas theme.
FF: What was the biggest research challenge in capturing the historical London setting and time period?
Fortunately, research is one of my favorite pastimes. The amount of Victorian research books I have on my shelves pales only in comparison to the number of Regency titles I own. So, finding information wasn’t a challenge. The biggest task was paring down those historical tidbits and inserting the ones I thought most people might not know about.
FF: Without giving too much away, what transformation does your heroine undergo over the course of the story?
Belle has to learn that letting things go doesn’t mean failure. It means trusting others and accepting her own limitations . . . which is something I struggle with. It’s hard to accept help from others when you want to be the one to help, which is Belle’s biggest lesson.
FF: What do you hope readers take away from your story this holiday season?
Honestly? I hope this story transports readers away from the hustle and bustle of a time period that can be stressful to the magical streets of merry ole London. Victorian England embodies the quintessential Christmas feel. And—of course—to instill a bit of hope even when circumstances seem dire.
FF: Is there a favorite scene or line from the book that still resonates with you?
I love the part where Belle and Rafe are racing across the streets of London trying to find little Cricket. It’s the perfect image of what God does for us—searching us out and finding us no matter where we may be trying to hide.
FF: For readers new to your books, what can they expect from your storytelling style in this novella?
Oftentimes I tackle tough subjects—in this case rejection and grief—but I always infuse hope along with a side of humorous secondary characters. My goal in every story I write is to impart hope, particularly with Christmas as the setting because that’s when hope Himself came down to earth.
