(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers)
There is a lot of pain baked into The December Market by RaeAnne Thayne.
The two main characters, soap shop owner Amanda Taylor, and the man who might, and likely will (because this is a festive romcom and not falling in love in not an option) win her heart, Rafe Arredondo, are scarred deep with loss and grief and while they are getting on life because that’s what you do, they have backed themselves into self-protective corners from which there is no emerging.
Or is there? Especially at the most wonderful time of the year?
Given the genre of which it’s a part, the answer would be an emphatic yes, but it takes a good long while for either person, Amanda especially, to drop their guard and admit that, if they can out their scarred hearts and souls for just one moment, it’s quite possible for love to win out over a host of very negative emotions.
But you have to be open to that kind of love, and Amanda, though she is engaged with every facet of town life, has a ton of loving and supportive friends, and a grandmother, Birdie, whom she adores, isn’t sure that after some fairly significant losses in the past that she’s willing to take that kind of chance.
Rafe too, while more open, is more concerned with raising his six-year-old son Isaac, and his role as one of Idaho town of Silver Springs paramedics and firemen, and doesn’t have any time for love.
If he could be kind enough to risk his own personal safety, she could certainly step outside her own comfort zone for a moment, at least long enough to help a man who was down.
Or, so he thinks.
But as the Silver Springs Holiday Giving Market whips into high gear, orchestrated by Amanda and occupying two weeks of the town’s civic life, Amanda and Rafe find themselves thrown more and more into close contact with each other, spurred on too by the fact that Isaac adores Amanda, and has decided, against any reasons Amanda can conceive, that she is his new best friend.
Amanda and Rafe are also drawn together by some concerns about Birdie dating Rafe’s grandfather Paolo, who only lost his wife a year ago, but while Rafe very quickly embraces his grandfather’s happiness, Amanda, protective not just of her locked-away heart but everyone else’s, won’t hear of Birdie, who’s boisterous, alive and full of heart, risking herself with what her granddaughter sees as a dubious romance.
That is, in essence, what drives the narrative in The December Market, a festive novel that is suffused with the wonder and beauty of the season, evoked by the magic of the market which is geared to commerce sure, but which is also the setting for Rafe and Amanda to get to know each other and to realise, page by page, that here could be the rest of their life, right smack bang in front of them.
But as with many of these stories, love takes a long while coming with many a back step accompanying a host of romance positive front steps.
(courtesy official author site)
While the romance of the town itself and the market give The December Market a decidedly lovely and wondrously festive air, what really drives this story is the back and forth between Amanda and Rafe.
It may not be completely well executed – there is a sense that many of the times Amanda pulls back or Rafe has doubts feel a little clunky and not quite how a real person would react (and yes, this is a romcom so the usual rules of human interaction don’t exactly apply but still …) – but thanks to some well-realised characterisation, some neatly woven in exposition and some side characters who do a nice job of pushing the protagonist would-be lovebirds along, The December Market mostly hits the mark.
It helps of course that Thayne clearly loves the festive season.
There is a magicality woven in every page of The December Market which is a love letter to the hope and possibility as much as any of these festive novels are, and it’s in every scene where snow is falling or a Christmas potlock dinner at the local retirement community is happening or even in the simple act of Rafe and his son going door to door shovelling snow off driveways.
It’s in the way that Rafe’s dad and son pop over to string his home with lights when circumstances won’t permit him too or how friends and family rally when an accident places in jeopardy two people with great importance to Amanda and Rafe.
Happiness seemed to wash over her in warm waves, and Amanda had to blink back tears as they continued walking, boots crunching in snow and a young boy’s giggles rising up through the perfect night like sleigh bells.
This is a novel that doesn’t just believe in the magical wonder of the season but in the capacity of Christmas to take a metric ton of past hurt, loss, and the scarring that results, and to set them aside for love to do its thing.
Thayne is wise enough not to pretend that love just waltzes in and everything is better; not even in a fairytale romcom is that possible, not unless you want to strain the bonds of believability to breaking point.
People hurt and they take a long time to heal, even with something good in the offing, and Thayne winningly gives Amanda particularly, but also Rafe, the chance to take the understandably steps needs to make their way towards the new world of love and community that beckons.
By giving them that time, against a backdrop which cannot help but egg it on, The December Market acquires an emotional heft that might otherwise have evaded it; we want love to prevail in books like this, but we want it to feel hard-earned and possible in the real world too, and Thayne delivers on all fronts, giving Rafe and Amanda a happy ever after but with a road to that place that feels believable and grounded.
Thus we embrace the second chances they have been given, and The December Market too, which is filled with pain and sadness, true, but also, rather glitteringly at a time of the year where good things can happen far more easily than normal (so the popular thinking goes), love, healing and a whole new world that may spark into life at Christmas but which will live on well beyond that, a gift that keeps on giving all year round.