(courtesy Penguin Books Australia)
On the top ten list of things that would wreck your Christmas, absolutely and completely and without a hint of celebratory salvation, surely having your ex turn up would be very high on the list?
That’s certainly the way Mia Robinson feels when, after braving a replacement bus from London to her parents manor house near Worcester – snow had halted the train from Paddington Station so instead of a two hour journey, she faced a five-to-six hour ordeal – and paying an exorbitant rate for a tax from the bus depot in town, she arrives home to find not only the usual huge lead-up to Christmas party in full swing but her ex Sam Williams among the guests.
Sam is by all accounts a sweet and lovely guy and a close uni friend of Mia’s older-by-11-months brother Charlie, but somehow, five or six years earlier, he did something so horrendously awful and distressingly embarrassing that Mia ghosted him almost on the spot and has never spoken to him since.
And yet, just after the first couple of chapters of Ghosted at Christmas by Holly Whitmore, Mia finds herself face-to-face with her arch nemesis, and at one of the traditional events that mark her close family’s celebration of the most wonderful time of the year.
Tired, grotty and ready to collapse, at least after she’s greeted her parents, the exuberant Penny and the quieter but very loving Martin, and her nearly century-old Aunt Gertie, seeing Sam is the sh*t icing on a rancid and decaying festive cake that Mia simply doesn’t want or need.
But she doesn’t wait. Instead, she flees up to the sanctuary of her room, where she scoops up a change of clothes and takes refuge in the bathroom. As she steps under the scalding spray of the shower, she mutters curses against Sam Williams. And Charlie, while she’s at it. Might as well curse James too. And actually? Mia decides to just add the entire male gender to the list.
Can it get worse? Oh yes, it most certainly can.
Because abandoned by his family, who booked a Mediterranean cruise over Christmas without checking he could make it, Sam has nowhere to go but to stay home alone in London, and so, being the kind chap he is, Charlie invites him to stay for the entire week.
Yes, ALL WEEK.
Mia is horrified and angry and beyond perplexed by Charlie’s apparent thoughtlessness, and while Sam is incredibly helpful and polite and sweet and pitches in wherever he can – in other words, the perfect guest – he is nothing but a potent remind of some fairly significant pain from Mia’s past.
Her horror at his presence is compounded by the fact her current cad of a boyfriend, James, has just ghosted her and so, while Mia is well employed, has a great group of friends including old uni bestie Lucy, and loves her life in London, she’s feeling pretty low and not in the mood to deal with ghosts of her romantic past.
Which is ironic, and here the title Ghosted at Christmas comes well and truly into play, because after she moves to the old renovated gardener’s cottage for some peace and quiet and distance from Sam, she discovers it already has an unofficial tent – the old gay gardener, John, who’s been in limbo for thirty years, with no one to talk to and nothing to do now he’s read all the books in the manor house’s library.
Considering he’s a ghost, Mia actually handles his presence reasonably well, and after she gets over the shock of sitting on him and he grapples with initial surprise that she can see him – why her of everyone who’d ever been at the estate? John doesn’t know though he has wonderfully outlandish thoughts on that front – they become surprising friends and just when Mia needs an ally.
At first, she decides that John, who’s never been into haunting people or clanging pots or being poltergeisty in the slightest, can simply help enact some revenge on Sam through small and silly pranks like hiding his socks or singing when the bluetooth speaker is well and truly in off-mode, but then things shift as John, who is beyond happy to have company and for it to be someone as lovely and sweet and friendly as Mia, realises that she still loves Sam, if only she could set aside her anger, and he most definitely loves her.
Thus he puts into action a plan of attack which a sad, wistful Sam and a snappily simmering Mia thrust together, and no, not like that thank you (although …) over and over again watching The Grinch and The Holiday under cosy blankets with hot cocoa, setting the table for Christmas lunch and helping to decorate the family’s Christmas tree.
It’s all terribly romantic, and for John, a lot of fun, especially as it takes his co-conspirator Mia a while to realise he is now plotting, for the best of all reasons, against her.
‘It would seem we are free to go,’ Mia observes wryly. As they start back towards the big house, John is nowhere to be seen. Annoyed as she is with him, Mia grudgingly admits that she’s somewhat grateful for the intrusion.
Will Sam and Mia get back together? Will John finally be able to cross over and this is how he makes it happen? And does Charlie’s never-seen girlfriend, Molly, actually exist?
Yes, of course, on all counts because this is a festive romcom.
What makes all those quite certain plot points feel fun and original and highly emotionally, imaginatively clever and vibrantly alive is the way Whitmore has crafted everything from witty, jaunty dialogue to beautifully realised full-formed characters and how she uses them to such great effect.
Ghosted at Christmas is one of those romcoms that romps along on sparklingly rich writing and a buoyant plot and scenes that, to steal an old breakfast cereal tagline, really snap, crackle and pop, come alive so richly and with such verve that you can see them bursting into riotous action right before your eyes.
It’s superb in just about every respect, with Whitmore well and truly across the fact that if you’re going to base your entire festive romcom on a delightfully out-there premise, that you then have to flawlessly and wonderfully execute it.
Reading Ghosted at Christmas is to be plunged into a rich and wondrously good family environment, a highly unusual friendship, a Christmas week full of yummy meals and decorating and festive fun, and to witness how, by simply giving someone a chance to tell their side of the story, old wrongs can be righted, horrible memories wiped clean and a new future plotted, free of anger and full of lifelong love.