(courtesy Pan Macmillan)
Every year I read a lot of Christmas rom-coms and every year I’m mostly glad I did.
There’s something comforting about reading about people’s lives taking a definitive turn for the better, especially when everything says there is no real hope of any kind of meaningful redemption, and having it all happen at a time of the year that often feels gloriously and irrationally magical.
It shouldn’t in lots of ways; it’s the end of the year, in the Southern Hemisphere at least, and you emerge into December weighed down by the sheer heaviness of slogging through another year, and so, by rights, Christmas shouldn’t feel magical at all.
But somehow it does, against the odds, and many writers like Claire Sandy make the most of it, giving their story of redemption and healing a little extra festive oomph by situating them at a time of the year when lights are twinkling, people are habitually gathering together and there’s a general sense of lightness and love.
But for all that, sometimes, those rom-coms I love, diverting though they are, feel a little too light and fluffy, all sugary promise and no nourishing substance, and while that’s fine for about five minutes after you finish the book, sometimes you want something more.
Something much more.
Snowed in for Christmas by the aforementioned Claire Sandy is that much more, a book certainly set at Christmas and with some lovely rom-com overtones but very much grounded in a very real world where consequences abound, pain is real and escaping it can be a struggle and a half.
And the questions that Tobercree would spark in Kitty would have to be answered. Asta punched her pillow as if it was to blame and then settled down, determined to keep the dreams at bay by sheer force of will.
The pain at the heart of Snowed in for Christmas is a longstanding one, held close by Asta Looney after she fled her rural village of Tobercree in Ireland for London where the pregnant sixteen-year-old hoped she could find a home for her and her daughter-to-be.
Leaving behind a warmly rambunctious but functionally dysfunctional family, Asta felt lost until she met Angie and her daughter and that longer-for new sanctuary found warm and loving form, augmented still further by landing a job with Conan, wealthy American journalist and man-about-town who needs her to run his chaotic world and may even love her?
She’s not sure but she does know she can’t go home to her pub-running Ma and her prickly sister Gerry who’s married to smooth local radio star Martin, and her cousin and BFF Oona who wants real, lasting love but can’t quite leave her one-night stands behind.
That is, until an offer comes along that’s too good to refuse, and Asta and her beautifully level-headed mid-teenager Kitty go back home for a week which turns into longer when heavy snows cut off access to the airports, forcing Asta to not only grapple with the mission that’s brought her back home but to deal with a past so painful she’d rather it stayed far, far away, much as it’s done during all those years in London.
(courtesy Pan Macmillan)
Now, this is where Snowed in for Christmas takes the whole escapist rom-com, redemptive novel schtick to a whole other level.
While Asta does meet the handsome, rugged and emotionally in-tune Jake, who lives in the “Big House” above the village, and sparks fly and romance is conjured up instantly out of nowhere – sure it’s fast but good lord somehow it works and you are shipping the two of them together with fervent festive wishfulness – Snowed in for Christmas is every bit as concerned, if not more so, with what’s happening when Asta isn’t in Jake’s big, strong and protective arms.
Kitty is loving getting to know her grandmother, aunt and other relatives, and soaking up life in a village which might be a hotbed of painful reminders for her mother but which is alive with the promise of all kinds of new things for her.
In many ways, Kitty is the engine of Asta’s reemergence, forcing her mother to not simply see the village in a whole new light but to deal with all kinds of long-held pain because beyond it, Asta belatedly realised, might lie a life shorn of all that stinging loss and barbed brokenness.
There is a lot of painful rediscovery and truth-telling going on, and it’s all evoked beatifully by Sandy who is not adept at bring worlds and characters to life in the first instance but sustaining and growing them with warmth, love and empathy.
Tobercree might have Asta on edge but you, dear reader, will be right at home here.
‘I knew you’d come.’ Jake opened the door as Asta’s boots crunched across the cold gravel. ‘No,’ he corrected himself as she dashed to him and threw herself into his open arms. ‘ I hoped you’d come.’ He kissed her, already aroused, already drunk on Asta, and whispered, ‘I never take anything for granted with you.’
What makes Snowed in for Christmas works so wondrously well is now deep it drills into the depths of what it means to be human.
Lots of novels attempt that, and some succeed, but few manage to lay it all out bare as Snowed in for Christmas does; it may be set at Christmas and it may have some of the tropes and cliches well and truly accounted for such as new love and renewed family ties, but it also is unafraid to dig deeper and admit that life can be hellishly, lingeringly awful at times.
And that all our wishes, hopes and prayers may burn as bright as Christmas votive candles all aglow, but that doesn’t mean they’ll all come true because no matter how hard we seek to give them form and function, they often founded on how grim life can be.
Asta is not spared the truth of that, not for a second, and her story is told with real insight and care, but she is also given a chance to find peace with her past, to find a meaningful way forward full of renewed familial connection, true love and hope that actually goes somewhere impactfully tangible.
Snowed in for Christmas may sit firmly in the festive rom-com camp, and it may offer falling snow and garrulously festive meals and Midnight Mass awash in carols and happiness, but it also feel emotionally substantial and authentically heartfelt, full of characters who matter, a story that rarely, if ever, misses a beat and an ending that feels hopeful and magical without feeling like it’s traded away its truth for a happy ending.