(courtesy Boldwood Books)
Enemies-to-friends is a fairly standard trope in romantic comedies, festive or otherwise.
So, the fact that Christmas Ever After by Jamie Admans features it should not as an almighty Santa-loving surprise; what is interesting is how effectively the author this well-worn genre element to give her rom-com some real vivacity, but even more importantly for a story set at Christmas, conjure up all the festive feels.
It seems at first that there’s no way that Franca Andrews and Raff Dardenne will ever be anything more than sniping retail combatants in a strip of shops dedicated entirely to the year-round sale of Christmas-themed merchandise.
Raff runs a shop selling handcrafted snowglobes, his family known not only for their exquisitely beautiful craftmanship but for the ability of the shop’s owner to know which of the disparate shoppers will make a perfect couple, their future close bond sealed by magically moving figures within the globe itself.
It’s romantic and entirely fitting for a store that sits astride, 365 days a year, the most wonderful time of the year with all its magical possibilities and wondrous hopefulness.
Franca, on the other hand, makes nutcrackers modelled on the Nutcracker itself, the 1892 ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a nod to her professional ballet dancing past – her career ended unexpectedly and painfully – and also her love of the story.
They are both perfectly situated for the street on which they sit, but not it seems for each other.
What a strange week. I’ve gone from thinking Raff Dardenne was the worst person in the world to wishing I’d not held onto my grudge so tightly and got to know him sooner. It suddenly seems horrendously unfair that if I survive this month, he will be evicted, and if he isn’t, then I will be. If only time travel was a thing and I could turn back the clock and undo all of this.
Or are they?
We know the answer to that, of course, before we even turn the pages to the start of Christmas Ever After but somehow Admans makes this story of two individuals locked in mortal retail combat – the council which owns the strip has decreed that only one of them shall survive the Christmas season with each given KPIs to meet to stay in business – feel fresh, alive and sweetly fun.
Very quickly, drawn together by an amusing but painful incident at the start of the story, Franca and Raff, each labouring under painful trauma and uncertainty about where their lives should lead, find themselves in far closer quarters than either would have ever wanted in the past.
But somehow, as they each discover that the other person has far more positive qualities than negative, a whimsical love story grows, kindness and self-sacrifice supplanting any desire to score points and emerge victorious at the end.
Raff emerges fairly quickly as the sweet and caring one, willing to do anything it takes to help his former retail enemy – to be fair, the chip was well and truly on Franca’s shoulder with Raff merely in the place of exhausted defender against her ceaseless and internecine barbs – and with a family who, While You Were Sleeping-like, emerge as the all-enveloping community of love and unconditional togetherness that Franca has always craved.
Ss she is drawn further and further into Raff’s world, she begins to understand that she’d had it all wrong, and that the council’s Hunger Games-ish edict, albeit with far less death thankfully, which is all her fault, may be the worst to happen to either of them.
(courtesy Boldwood Books)
Or, with the enemies becoming friends theme transcendant, the absolute best.
There is everything to love about Christmas Ever After, the latest in a series of novels set in the same locale which never feels less than accessible even if you’ve missed all the previous instalments of which this reviewer is guilty as charged, and chief among them is the way that Admans always keep in the forefront how much each of us needs somebody who loves us without condition and with a buoyantly laudable selflessness.
They are the themes of the season, naturally, and in Admans’s hands, the coming together of Franca and Raff feels like the great big restorative, social fissure-healing moment we all need.
The world as it stands right now, feels rent by anger, misunderstanding and fractiousness, and if there’s one thing Christmas Ever After does quite wonderfully, it’s to remind us that there is no hatred too big than can’t be breached.
And we’re not talking by wafty, fairy floss-like thoughts of love as a bumper sticker, card slogan idea.
This is love that gets down in the trenches, which is asked to sacrifice something or several somethings of itself, and to put aside all of the anger, resentment, hurt and pain, and see the world from someone else’s perspective.
Never mind not wanting him to be evicted from his shop in January, I never want to step outside of his arms again, ever.
That’s not even remotely easy to do but by accident and happenstance at first, that’s exactly what Raff first, and then Franca do, setting aside manufactured and ill-judged enmity, and choosing in muscular, emotionally honest fashion to prioritise someone else above themselves.
It’s not easy, not even at Christmas, but they do it, and part of the immense charm of this charmingly robust tale of choosing love over hate, others over yourself, is how Raff and Franca finally realise how richly empowering it can be to set aside what you think is important, and this is true for Franca more than anyone, and let yourself make someone else the star of the festive show.
It’s a giddily seductive idea, and it works an absolute treat in Christmas Ever After, which is alive with hope, love and magical festive possibility, and a fairytale sensibility that doesn’t for a second forget the real world is tough and unforgiving and can hurt you deeply, but knows there is a way back from those dark places, and especially at a time of year when the very best parts of being human are in the ascendancy.
Christmas Ever After is a joy to read, a huge festive hug of a book which celebrates the season extraordinarily well, but which, even more than that, elevates what it means to be selfless, to love without condition and to find a home where you are not only accepted but celebrated and loved, most particularly by someone who was once an enemy but who is now a friend, and swept up in the romance of the season, so much more.