Who doesn’t love a second chance?
They’re what we live for, crave, want and need, and we endlessly romanticise them in countless ways and by numerous means, hoping against hope that the mistakes of our past can be fixed in some way by wise choices and some grace and forgiveness in our present.
Life, though, has a way of beating us down to the point where we wonder if get that much hallowed second shot at happiness, at feeling peace and contentment instead of self-recrimination and regret, and maybe, just maybe, get that much-desired happy-ever-after.
A Cross-Country Christmas by Courtney Walsh embraces this idea of life getting a do-over, all set at a time of year, Christmas, when the very idea of a new start and of love and inclusion is part and parcel of the emotional landscape.
We not only want our second chance, we want it at Christmas, at least the more romantically inclined among us, and so, by placing the story of Will Sinclair and Lauren Richmond at the most wonderful time of the year, Walsh satisfyingly deliver that dream of love and forgiveness we all have buried within us somewhere.
She also, with writing that is fresh and vivacious and dialogue that sparkles with real warmth and personality, takes us on an escapist jaunt from the desert surrounds of Los Angeles all the way to Pleasant Valley, Illinois, all while giving Will and Lauren a chance to undo mistakes and hurts of the past.
“But when it came to relationships, to putting herself out there with other people, she remained closed off, unwilling to risk getting hurt again. Very few people really knew her, and that was how she liked it.
For Will, it was the exact opposite. His magnetic personality drew people to him. He was easy-going and friendly and genuinely seemed to love getting to know everyone that came in his path.
But in his career, he held back.
We’re both afraid of losing something.
Maybe they had more in common that she thought.” (P. 124)
Lauren and Will, who is the best friend of Lauren’s brother Spencer who is about to have his first baby with wife Helen and has begged his sister to break her going home from Christmas ban and share this epically important moment with him, end up having plenty of time to right those historic wrongs.
Due to a long-held, horribly invasive hurt incurred at a party a decade or so before when Will was a drunken loser heading for a life-transforming incident and Lauren was a studious kid in love with her brother’s bestie, Lauren is not exactly thrilled to be sharing a week or so driving home on a road trip that is way more circuitous than she likes.
On the surface, she should be glad that her fear of flying has her spending time with handsome, sweet and clearly changed baseball coach Will, but Lauren, a set designer on sitcoms who has a dazzlingly bright future ahead of her, is not, her heart held close thanks to some familial pain from years before and that incident with Will she refuses to disclose to anyone, including best friend Maddie.
Her emotionally closed-off state manifests as outright antagonism to Will who persists in trying to turn this road trip, which has far more meaning to him than he lets on, into a memory all of its own for both of them.
So far, so rom-comy with everything gloriously, and predictably set up for a Tracy-Hepburn battle of the romantic wills, the kind that looks mutually antagonistic but is really love trying ton get out from under a whole world of hurt and regret.
What makes A Cross-Country Christmas , apart from its gloriously good evocation of Christmas at the most romantic time of the year, is the way Walsh effortlessly takes all kinds of standard rom-com tropes and makes them her own in ways that feel warmly and groundedly human.
The narrative is escapist at heart, sure, and it delivers up a slew of the kind of moments that sit at the heart of every opposites attract rom-com – the antagonism of two warring souls, the slow coming together in unexpected ways, the camaraderie and closeness, the falling out, and the inevitable joining together – but it does so in such a way that it all feels wonderfully fresh, original and affecting.
It’s all too easy to read books like A Cross-Country Christmas and think “been there, done that” but thanks to the vivacity of Walsh’s characterisation, an abundance of emotional resonance built into even seemingly inconsequential scenes, and dialogues that lifts of the page with its playfulness and meaningful intent, this novelised rom-com feels like a whole new world of romantic possibilities.
By treading the line between expected rom-com tropes and an originality that makes Will and Lauren’s eventual romance feels like it’s real and heard earnt, Walsj offers up a story that is the perfect antidote to the hellish unromanticism of the last two years or so.
“In that moment she decided to stop caring about Will Sinclair. She would start systematically replacing all the fantasies of him, beginning with that conversation in the kitchen. She started her car, put it in drive, and drove away, leaving the house and Will in her rearview mirror.
Until this trip.” (P. 196)
In fact, the author admits in her note from the author section that “After the 18+ months we’d all had living in and navigating a pandemic, I just wanted to get lost in a sweet romance for a while” and get lost in A Cross-Country Christmas you do, feeling every beat of Will and Lauren’s respective beats, all while understanding why it is that though they need want and need second chances, they’re not sure they have it in one to give that gift of renewal to each other.
Watching them get to that point is a delightful joy, made all the more satisfying because Walsh hasn’t just crafted cardboard cutout characters designed simply to propel a tired and ordinary rom-com narrative along, she’s given us two vibrantly real people, flawed and hurt and full of all kinds of buried good and wonderful things, in a story that feels deliciously, happily escapist and so fresh that it feels like one of the most real stories of love and belonging you’ve ever come across.
It’s rare to have anyone give new life and vibrancy to a well-used genre but Walsh manages it with so much heartwarming truthfulness and honesty that you are rooting like nothing else fo Will and Lauren to take their second bite at the cherry and makes something altogether upliftingly new and good with it.
It’s an absolute joy reading A Cross-Country Christmas; not simply because it’s set at Christmas, which Walsh evokes so perfectly it makes all our hopes for the season feeling entirely within reach, but because she brings two very real feeling people together on a trip that comes to mean the world to them, that isn’t just special in the moment but which leads to something lastingly alive and full of hope, exactly the kind of thing you want to have happen at Christmas but to last throughout the year, not just now but forever.