(courtesy Sourcebooks Casablanca)
Reading a series of books, festive or otherwise, in other than the intended order, is always a risk.
If the author is good at their craft, then plunging into books two then three before bouncing back to book one, isn’t even remotely the end of the world; sure, you may not be fully up to speed with who the characters are but a deft piece of exposition here, and of course, there, and it’s like you’ve read the missing volume of volumes anyway.
Still, there’s nothing like living the full story as the writer intended and so after enjoying the funny, sweet and very Christmassy delights of There’s Something About Merry, and Along Came Holly, it’s time to go back to where Codi Hall’s Mistletoe Romance series began with Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist.
Proclaiming on the back cover that “this Christmas story just got remixed”, the novel is a riff on the old best friends become lovers idea, a marked departure from the usual enemies-to-friends premise that gets most literary romcoms off and running.
In the picture postcard perfect town of Mistletoe, Idaho, The Winter family are much loved members of the town, mum and dad Chris and Victoria presiding with warmth, fun and love over their three kids, Nick aka Nicholas, Merry and Holly, and honorary and much-loved ring-ins like Noel, drawn into the family many years when she was a small child but even more pronouncedly ten years earlier when her parents died in a car accident when Noel was just 16.
Nick completely forgot they were only acting and reluctantly removed his arm. Holding Noel has felt good. Right.
Maybe they shouldn’t pretend to be together for anyone’s sake. For something that was supposed to be fake, it had felt too real.
Ten years on, Noel is very much a part of the Winter clan, who run a Christmas tree farm on the edge of town and who keep the memory of Noel’s family, the Carters, alive by staging the big Carter-led Christmas Concert every December.
Names aside – and yes, the allusions to Christmas are incredibly obvious but somehow it all works and you happily go along with all the nominative festiveness – it’s clear that the Winters are into the season in a big way, but Noel always hovers on the periphery, seasonally at least, too scarred by her trauma to embrace a time of year her family LOVED.
She’s also fearful of listening to her heart which is increasingly her telling that Nick, whom she’s known since they were both six, is far more than just her very best friend in the world.
Newly returned from eight years serving overseas with the US military, Nick is, and she will not and cannot admit this to herself, her heart’s desire, and while it niggles at the commitment averse maternity nurse, she can easily ignore by focusing on the fact that her bestie has a girlfriend, Amber.
Nobody among his friends or family likes the shallow, prickly woman but she’s been Nick’s girlfriend the entire time he’s been away, and that doesn’t look like changing anytime soon.
Until it does, and Amber coldly dumps Nick and suddenly all best are off.
No problem, reasons Noel, this doesn’t have to mean anything.
But then, to make Amber and her sudden new boyfriend, Guy and Noel’s Friend With Benefits, Trip, jealous one night in a bar, Noel and Nick play act kissing and, well, it feels like this is where the friendship is heading.
Nick is all for it, a man who wants long-term everything and lots of kids, and realises he wants all that with Noel, but his BFF of two decades standing, while realising she is in fact attracted to Nick, can’t bring herself to lower her emotional barriers and let Nick into her heart where, really and truly, he’s been all along anyway.
Central to this will-they-won’t-they story, Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist is filled with all kinds of musical references, and while Noel like it modern with USBs and streaming, Nick is an old school kind of boy, even at 26, pressing all his playlists onto CDs which Noel plays on a stereo she keeps especially for Nick’s curated musical lists.
Theirs is a friendship that works, and works brilliantly, on all kinds of levels, but is the next step for them to become bona fide lovers? Is that where all this romantic playacting is heading?
Of course it is; like every good festive romcom worth it tinsel-draped salt, Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist we know that Noel will open up her heart, that Nick will plunge on in and that everyone’s hearts desires including that of the wider Winter clan, who ADORE Noel (as she does them), will be fulfilled this festive season.
In this moment, locked against Nick, anticipating his kiss, she [Noel] couldn’t come up with a single reason why they wouldn’t work.
‘Say it.’
‘I can’t.’
But the genius of Hall’s warm and funny writing is that she manages to take a well-telegraphed and wholly expected ending and have some real fun and evoke some real emotional meaning along the way.
Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist is a delight in all kinds of ways, because while Nick and Noel are working out what it is they want to be, we get to spend time with the Winter clan planning concerts and baking festive food and just being all warm and caring and loved up, and we are with Noel’s bestie Gabby, who’s getting married and Nick and Noel’s close friends, Anthony and Pike, two straight men who prove that men and women can be friends and you don’t always have to go down the When Harry Met Sally route.
Until you do, and of course, that is precisely where Noel and Nick end up going, but not before a lot of angst and emotional wrangling, and some real moments of heartfelt introspection as the prospect of love, real love, forces Noel to reassess whether she wants to stay traumatised and scared the rest of her life, or open her heart and see where the rest of her emotionally liberated life might take her.
Into Nick’s strong, kind and loving arms, naturally, but as Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist progresses, strewn with music and festive markers of all kinds, we get to witness two people on a quite lovely journey, with the fact it takes place at the most wonderful of the year just an added and delightful bonus.