Juniper's Christmas

Juniper's late dad was originally from Ghana, coming to England as a refugee when he was a kid. Niko's life is derailed by the death of his Indian wife. Much of the story has to do with the lives, circumstances, and surprising qualities of the various people "living rough," i.e. homeless, in the park, and those who try to help them. A number of characters are cartoonishly stereotypically Irish who often use dialect, and the author, who is also Irish, makes stereotypical generalizations about Irish people, such as that they all like horses.

There's a lot of death and bereavement in the back story, as Juniper's lost her dad, Niko's lost his wife, and neither of them is coping that well. And then Juniper's mom disappears. Corporate greed and bureaucratic power-tripping threaten the park and those who make it their home. As the plot unfolds, kid, reindeer, and adult characters find themselves locked in scary prisons by gangsters. A mom punches her kid's kidnapper hard enough to knock the kidnapper out. Gangsters have assorted weapons.

Two different characters have lost their much-loved spouses to untimely death; one of them seems to be finding new love with a woman his age.

Characters, especially Irish ones, call each other "idiot," as well as the variation "eejit."

The gangsters are known for drugging and otherwise harming horses. Rhubarb has a mind- and behavior-altering effect on reindeer who eat it.