Novella set in Innsbruck (“watch the whimsy”)
- Book: Proposal at the Winter Ball
- Location: Innsbruck
- Author: Jessica Gilmore
A delightful, short read (with an especially large typeface) set just pre-Christmas in the lovely Austrian city of Innsbruck, full of Christmas sparkle, Schnapps and “long lashes tipped with snow“. This is the story of Flora and Alex.
Flora Buckingham is the youngest daughter in a family, where the other members are successful – Mum is a TV doctor and Dad is a TV chef. Alex has been in their lives for as long as they can remember – he was excluded from his birth family from a relatively early age, and was blamed for the death of his natural mother, who suffered post natal depression. Add into the mix a wicked and salacious stepmother and it is no wonder that he found comfort in the Buckingham family. Flora and Alex have been “Life-long best mates, blood brothers and confidants…” Can they rack up the relationship into something more romantic…? ( I guess the title of the book kind of gives the game away!).
Alex chooses Flora to be his interior designer on a commission for Lusso Hotels, a fabulously up-market chain headed by the über-glam Camilla. So they head off to Innsbruck just before Christmas to meet and schmooze with the great and the good at the chain’s flagship hotel, in the mountains West of the city. This also involves visits to the Christmas Markets, and a stopover in one of the designer mountain huts, as well as a good stab at learning to ski on Flora’s part (inevitably, Alex is pretty much a pro, and is there to catch her when she falls…).
Flora is a self effacing young woman, who develops in confidence with the support of a good man by her side. A few glitches along the way, but soon we are off with them on the sleigh ride of romance.

The TripFiction postcard at the Innsbruck Christmas Market
As for setting… Innsbruck is a romantic and glamorous backdrop for this light story: “The old, medieval streets surrounded by snow-capped mountains gave Innsbruck a quaint, old-fashioned air but there was a cosmopolitan beat to the Tyrolean town. People came here to shop at the Christmas markets and to enjoy the myriad winter sports aimed at all levels. There was a palpable sense of money, of entitlement, of health and vigour.”
However, the gaudily bedecked ice cave of the ballroom, described in the book, where the eponymous Winter Ball of the title takes place, seems to be a decorative disaster, where the “the ghost of Christmas kitsch just threw up”. This doesn’t quite ring true. Austria to my mind is always tastefully muted when it comes to Christmas decoration, all white lights and sparkle (as per the photo of the TripFiction postcard). But that is a simple observation in an otherwise short, Mills and Boon romantic read.