(courtesy Hachette Australia)
When you have been hurt deeply, traumatically so, it’s understandable, especially if you’re a child and your ability to process the level and type of hurt isn’t yet developed enough to think it all through, to recoil and withdraw from whatever hurt you.
Distance, we think, is the best way to handle what has hurt us so it can’t, obviously, hurt us again, but the problem is these instinctual reactions end up buried deep down in our psyche and are never revisited (unless we see a therapist but that’s not always a given) and so, we carry them into adulthood where, much of the time, they simply don’t serve any kind of useful purpose anymore.
Someone who is finding that out belatedly finding that out is Lexie, who, with her “wish jar” in hand – a childhood tradition where she writes out and puts in a wish every Christmas in a glittery, sequined glass jar – has spent her adult life not staying in the one place for too long.
Lexie is the protagonist of Home Again For Christmas by Emily Stone, and she employs wanderlust as an adult life goal as a result of a dad who couldn’t commit to her after he walked out on her mother and her when she was a child and who failed to show when it mattered thereafter.
Rather than doubling down on commitment which you might think would be a logical response to having a flaky dad who was never present, Lexie has recoiled from any sort of personal or career commitment.
‘We close for a couple of days over Christmas,’ Ange continued, ‘so you’ll want to come in before that. So tomorrow, have a little lie-in, maybe just come in for the afternoon?’ And again, as Ange showed her back down the stairs, Lexie had the feeling of being steamrolled, with absolutely no choice in the matter.
It may not seem like a logical response but she formed that response when she was a profoundly hurt kid, and at that age, that decision made all the sense in the world.
Now though? Well, its stopping her from living her best and full adult life, something that doesn’t become fully apparent until her estranged dad Richard suddenly dies and she finds out that she has not only inherited a half share in his boutique travel business which sells experience holidays centred around major cultural events, but that she must work there for a year and ensure it’s profitable before she gets any material benefit.
That means staying put in Bath where she can speak to potential customers who walk into their shopfront and working with the close-knit team which includes admin superstar Ange, a grandmother in her sixties who is across everything, and grumpy Theo who might be handsome but who’s attitude to a person he sees as an uncaring interloper leaves a lot to be desired.
It’s going to be a LONG year, and Lexie isn’t thrilled about the time it will involve, the level of commitment or the fact that it’s her dad’s company, a man she wants no connection to and who has, without any warning, foisted himself onto her life in the most invasive way possible.
She’s unhappy, Theo is unhappy with neither wanting a bar of the other but for wholly different reasons.
Despite the clearly festive title, Home Again For Christmas is really a Christmas tangential novel, with some of the events happening on or near Christmas, but without going full throttle on the holiday itself.
If you’re wanting a full Christmas fix where the season dominates the novel, then Home Again For Christmas may not be the festive romcom for you BUT having said that, it’s a great read that waves into the most wonderful time of the year into crucial scenes and life moments, using the togetherness of the holiday to bring people who need to be in close proximity together.
It’s a deftly exercised narrative device and it means that while Theo and Lexie aren’t always together, especially after the almost obligatory schism moment, a romcom trope Stone embraces with understandable gusto, where they go their temporarily separate ways, they are in the same place at the same time when it counts.
It’s no surprise, of course, that Lexie begins to slowly appreciate, cliched hiccups on the road to romantic happiness aside, that being somewhere for a while, becoming connected to people who love and care for you, including half-sister Rachel, and being committed to something that matters, even if her dad established it, is no bad thing.
She also comes to realise that while her experience of her dad was negative and full broken promises and disappointed heartbroken moments, that wasn’t what everyone saw or experienced and she begins to heal from a deep-seated hurt when she comes to see that maybe her dad has some good sides to him too.
Instead, she [Lexie] bent over him [Theo], kissed his forehead. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
Because whatever he might want now, she didn’t want to come to expect him to always be there.
Full of vibrant, realistic dialogue, which is playful when it needs to be and serious when the narrative arc calls for it, Home Again For Christmas is a buoyantly written, substantial festive romcom that injects a reasonable amount of raw humanity into proceedings while still staying magically hopeful (which is what romcoms demands but especially those set at Christmas).
In fact, it has more than the usual share of vulnerable groundedness which works to give the two central characters real depth and emotional stakes that matter which, far from weighing down the light and frothy romcomness of it all with weighty serious emotions, actually benefits the storyline and makes all the romantic magic of the story feel all the more meaningful and impactful.
You actually get invested in the individual stories of Lexie and Theo and how they have both healed or are healing from past (and partly present) life hurts, and while you know what the finish line is and when you’re likely to reach it and how, the story still feels fresh and fun to read.
Home Again For Christmas may not occupy all the Christmas all the time, but it uses the season well to bring people together who didn’t realise they needed a big, sprawling, caring found family until they had one, and to tell a story which soothes broken soul, heals the heart and which reminds us that there is always a new way forward and it may come unexpectedly and in ways that change you for the better when you most need it (even if you don’t want it at the time).