(courtesy Hachette Australia)
Who doesn’t adore a good love story?
Even better, one set at Christmas when everything is at a peak of wonderfulness, magic is in the air and anything and everything seems possible (bar finding a parking spot at the locla mall but then, that’s a whole other thing).
And if all that isn’t enough, one with a heartwarmingly queer flavour which gives you a whole other slant on the festive rom-com while making it abundantly and affectingly clear that “love is love” is not just a catchy phrase for demonstrations and online campaigns.
The Merriest Misters by Timothy Janovsky (You’re a Mean One, Matthew Prince), is a rom-com in the classic Christmas mold, that gives us all the tropes and cliches we want and love but in ways that feel fresh, vital and hugely enjoyable.
Patrick Hargrave and Quinn Muller are in their first year of marriage and while their love for each other, which began with an unpromising meet-cute at college, got off to a flying start, it has start to sag markedly and fray ominously of late.
Patricks is overworked at the architecture firm where his talent is scorned and his workload is punishing, Quinn loves being an educator but isn’t enjoying the admin and parent hell of teaching and the house they’re living in, because yes, they got a house at the get-go of marriage since that’s what wedded cluples do right, is leaky, draughty and a drag on both their souls.
‘Okay then. It’s time. Put on the cloak.’
The moment I have permission, the tingling takes hold of me [Patrick] until I’m clutching the fabric of the cloak. I wrap it around myself and disappear into a haze of golden glitter. It feels as if, simply bt my putting it on, it’s changing my molecular makeup. The glitter is spiralling in between my cells.
So, as they appraoch their Christmas as a married couple, their romance is faltering, their love is cracking under the pressure and the buoyant hope that propelled them to commit to each other is fading like Patrick’s commitment to watching Elf on Christmas Eve.
But then something magical happens …
Well, not magical exaxtly; Patrick knocks out a person in their home that he assumes is a burglar but who turns out to be, yup, Santa Claus, who is well and truly down for the count for a variety of reasons.
As you’ve likely seen in a million other Christmas stories, Patrick has to step in to replace Santa Claus, with Quinn reluctantly along for the ride as his Merriest Mister (hence the title), but rather than being a gig for the night, as the couple expects, it turns out they have to don the mantle of Santa Claus for good.
Or at least a probatinary year because it turns out, in Janovsky’s brilliantly imagined Santa Claus and North Pole world-building, the position of Santa Claus is filled on a rotating basis with the council that oversees the elf-filled, magically snowy place where Christmas comes to life filled with ex-Santas and their spouses.
They’ve never had a same-sex couple in the position before but no one at the North Pole bats an eyelid so not only are they adept at scattering Christmas magic everywhere but they are inclusive too which simply adds to the escapist joy of The Merriest Misters.
(courtesy official author site / (c) Rebecca Phillips Photography)
But what really helps add to the emotional heft ofThe Merriest Misters is that Janovsky is happy to explore how low things have sunk for the once in-love twosome.
While he makes clear the love is still clear if they are just given the bandwidth to find it, and surely a secondment to the North Pole away from the endless stresses and strains of day-to-day life should give them just that, the truth is that Patrick and Quinn have a big battle to find their way back to each other.
Even though the back cover blub intimates that they may be shovelling coal into each other’s stockings the following year once the one-year Santa gig has run its course, you suspect that love will find its way back to embracing them both.
Rather happily though, The Merriest Misters doesn’t choose the easiest and laziest means of making that happen which is to throw in some narratively convenient Christmas magic.
Plenty of festive stories do that, and well, it works so why not, but The Merriest Misters has already established that it’s willing to go as emotionally honest as needed, starkly out the threadbare state of Patrick and Quinn’s relationship, so taking that approach would feel like cheating and not in keeping with the rest of the emotionally authentic tone and feel of the story.
I [Quinn] embraced my masculinity out in the field at the Tundra Dome. I’ll embrace my femininity for this gingerbread event. Both of those traits live inside me, and both, just like our wedding anniversary, deserve to be celebrated.
Janovsky, who writes with an assured hand that gives weight to the characters, zip and emotional truthfulness to the dialogue and a zing to the narrative which flawlessly flows between the present day and looks back at the past glories of Patrick and Quinn’s great love affair, invests the final act with The Merriest Misters with the requisite happy ending but one that makes sense and feel true to the story as a whole.
It’s a delight to see this happen because some festive stories this reviewer has read have been let down by very trite and simplistic even if inarguably festive endings that feel like a betrayal of the struggles the characters have gone through to that point.
The Merriest Misters doesn’t even begin to suffer from this shortcoming, serving up the happy-ever-after we’ve been craving and expecting from the beginning, but with a satisfying nod to the emotional weightiness that has gone before.
This means that while the most wonderful time of the year does its thing and leaves our hearts warm and glowing as a result, it’s not done at the expense of a story that isn’t afraid to admit that life doesn’t always offer up magic and wonder and can feel downright scary and terrible more than we’d like it to.
If you want your Christmas rom-coms served up with a bit emotional grunt than the average Hallmark effort, then grab a copy of The Merriest Misters and dive into a brilliantly told story that doesn’t hold back on the world-weariness and emotional terrors of life but which dares too to say, with charm and festive escaism to burn, that for all the horrors that life can visit on us like failing relationships, that magic and renewal can find us too, and hopefully, if you’re like Patrick and Quinn, at the most magical time of the year.