Fellow readers. If you are looking for a shorter book with witty banter and a holiday romance vibe, check out Melody Carlson’s The Christmas Swap. This novella packs a punch in less pages than your standard 300-ish page book. Don’t discount this as a lightweight, however. Grab your Ugg socks, raid your kids’ Halloween candy and dig into The Holiday Swap.
When I saw the description of this darling holiday romance, I assumed it would be something like The Holiday. Wrong-o. Dig in, sisters. This is good stuff!
Here’s our line-up of Swap characters:
- Emma: early 30’s, from Arizona, substitute teacher and part-time musician; parents relocated to Africa for work
- Gillian: Emma’s long-time friend; has led a privileged life; Emma and Gillian are close because of longevity, not similar interests or lifestyle
- Grant: Gillian’s brother, a good guy
- Harris: Grant’s buddy, more aligned with Gillian in interests and ‘tude
- Mrs. Landers: mom of Gillian and Grant; proudly livin’ the bougie lifestyle
- Mr. Landers: a good man
- West Prescott – late 30’s, songwriter (professional name TW Prescott); lives in Breckenridge
Emma’s been friends with Gillian for a zillion years. Sure they have history. But the live differently, spend differently, value different things, and their levels of respect are verrrrry different. Melody Carlson did an incredible job building Gillian’s character because I wanted to throat punch her before the mid-way point of the book. I kept thinking, ‘what the hell, Emma, cut this sister loose!’
Emma, Gillian and Gillian’s family live in Arizona. Since Emma’s parents relocated for mission work in Africa, she’s been solo for Christmas for years. Gillian’s family takes Emma in as another family member during the Christmas season. They go all out, and show Emma serious lovin’.
To shake things up, Mr. and Mrs. Landers decide to house-swap for a trip to Breckenridge to honor the snowy Christmas memories of Mr. Landers’ past. Gillian has a grand vision of hookin’ her claws into Harris. She’d also like to off-load her pal Emma on her brother Grant.
Emma is pleased as punch to see snow for the first time and be on this great trip. Mr. Landers and Grant are excited and easy peasy. The other three? Again, throat punch.
The Arizona crew is coming to stay at West’s house. Coincidentally, it’s been all tricked out with Christmas decor for a music video (a song he wrote for the singer). West runs into Gillian in the driveway by chance and she mistakes him for ‘hired help.’ Does anyone say that these days? Obnoxious. And demeaning.
As it turns out, West does pretty darn well for himself. He actually has folks who help him maintain his property. Neither here nor there because West isn’t out to prove anything to Gillian. Nevertheless, West doesn’t come clean that he isn’t the hired help and actually goes along with the thinking that he’s the property manager.
West offers to take Emma skiing and romance blooms.
Back to our modern day Cruella Gillian. Evidently she doesn’t like Emma getting the attention. Or the googly eyes from West. And when Gillian finds out that West is actually TW Prescott – of the well-compensated and talented songwriting fame, well, Gillian doesn’t think so poorly of this guy after all. And girlfriend’s got some tiger claws to claim her stake.
So here a reader thinks he/she is thumbing through a sweet, rated G romance only to find out that it’s catty and real and romantic. Kaboom!
I was really hoping the author would include an epilogue about Emma dropping Gillian like a bag of flaming dirty diapers. That’s not very holiday-ish of me, now is it?
Off to raid my kids’ trunk or treat candy while they aren’t looking…