(courtesy Sourcebooks Casablanca)
When it comes to Christmas novels, and really many forms of festive storytelling, the much observed truism that there is nothing new under the sun is well and truly borne out.
That’s not necessarily a criticism since those of us who love the season love the tropes and cliches with almost as much heartwarming passion as we love the event itself, but the fact is the same narrative beats occur time and again, the only difference in their expression influenced by the giftedness of the creator arranging them in yet another familiar and cosy form.
What is done with them, as it is with any form of storytelling heavily reliant on certain boxes being ticked, is key and it’s not always done well.
That, however, cannot be said of There’s Something About Merry (Mistletoe Romance #2) by Codi Hall, a novel which takes the tropes of the season of chestnuts roasting and halls being decked, and makes something truly wondrously new with them that makes you glad you’re around to glory to be a part of them.
In contrast to many quite lovely Christmas stories which leave you feeling warmly but benignly happy, There’s Something About Merry leaves you awash in fairly noticeable happiness, your soul stirred to such a reality-relieving degree, all the festive feels you could ask for pirouetting in gleefully festive flight within, that you wondered if anything was capable of making Christmas truly feel magically special again.
Jace launched into the jolly tune, and she involuntarily glanced at Clark, but he was focused on blowing up a ten-foot Santa. She couldn’t get Clark’s facial expression out of her mind. Had he been irritated with her for letting his son help her? Had he overheard his son and thought she was gathering dirt? It wouldn’t surprise her if some of the more manipulative women in town had tried using Jace to get to Clark, but she would never. Besides, based on the rumor mill, Clark wasn’t interested in getting involved with anyone, and she was done with emotionally unavailable men.
Mr. Clark Griffin had nothing to worry about from her.
That may be an awful lot of attribute to one book, but as this frequent and copious reader will attest, there are very novels of any kind that actually have a genuinely significant impact upon you.
Especially those that come pre-loaded, or is that burdened, by the expectations of a season which doesn’t brook anything less than totally and utter surrender to the surgingly vivacious feelings of the season; how can any one novel ever hope to deliver on such buoyantly demanding needs and wants?
And yet There’s Something About Merry does, somehow taking elements of the season and making them feel fresh and new and alive, and in so doing, stoking the long-dead fires of Christmas childhood where we scrambled to be up at 4 a.m. to open presents and every night’s sleep before the arrival of Santa was both delayed agony and fizzily expectant ecstasy.
We are always trying to find that again, at least those of us who love Christmas to an almost cult-like and injurious degree, and we often fail, resigned to the fact that close enough is about the best we’ll ever managed again.
And then along comes a novel like There’s Something About Merry which not only stokes the fire of all the things we love about Christmas but reminds how connectively magical it can be and how, in the right hands, it can actually feel like not just the most wonderful time of the year but to life reborn for the rest of the year too.
(courtesy official Codi Hall Twitter account)
Hall achieves this near miraculous feat by focusing not directly on Christmas itself, though it is definitely there in many lovely and hard not to notice ways, but by making the characters of the story and their close and life-affirming connections to each other what really impels the story further.
Merry Winter, the heart and soul of the novel but also of the town of Mistletoe, Idaho in which the story is winningly set, is just twelve months into her return to her home town and is as happy to be home as her family is to have her back.
She works at the town’s school, volunteers for a slew of community events, including naturally and necessarily the Christmas highlight, the Festival of Trees where businesses buy trees and decorate them for charity, and gives her time, along with the rest of the family, as their Christmas tree farm, itself a staple of countless novels and Hallmark films.
Merry is the protagonist you fall in love with, and then some, which is lucky because that’s what someone like relatively newly-hired farm foreperson, Clark Griffin, is meant to do, and does, his addition, along with his adorable seven-year-old son, Jace, to the Winters’ full and lovingly inclusive family proof that belonging somewhere and to certain people is what really makes life complete.
The Winters are the ideal family on steroids and it’s impossible not to read the blissful delight that is There’s Something About Merry and not feel a thousand good and wonderful things about them.
Merry leaned into him, whispering, ‘I checked my schedule. I’m free this Saturday.’
He turned her way and she met his gaze, smiling. ‘That’s awesome, so am I.’
When the photographer yelled at everyone to look at the camera, he [Clark] didn’t have to fake a smile.
The near magical thing here is that Hall manages to take what could’ve been cringingly cheesy festive perfection and makes it instead feel lived-in and real; sure there are cute elements such as Merry’s name and that of her sister-in-law Noel, and the name of the town itself, but so skillfully does the author bring the world of the Winters alive, and with such buoyant joy and judiciously-used humour, that you happily imbibe and embrace it all, almost without question.
Sure, like many other residents of the Christmas genre of storytelling, it’s all idealised icing in the festive cake, but she manages to make it all feel grounded and true in a way that few other stories of its kind do, anchored by fully-formed characterisation, sparklingly witty and heartfelt dialogue and a sensible decision to make the events of the story happen against the backdrop of the season rather than be wholly dependent on it.
That last part is important because while it’s a joy to sink into a perfectly wonder-inducing and happiness-stoking distillation of Christmas – it’s why we decorate and sing carols and and festoon ourselves with all the trappings and feels of the season – you often get the sense that everything will fall flat the moment December 25th is marked, and the 12 days of Christmas run their course in early January.
But There’s Something About Merry feels like, Christmassy though it is in ways magically alive and soul burnishingly delightful, that it could keep on going right through the year and that the Winters, especially Merry and Clark who are destined to be loved up for life not just one snow-filled, twinkling lights season, will be as happy and wonderful to be around (and you love them, you really love them!) in the middle of June as they are in December and honestly who doesn’t want the promise of something as lovely as that?