(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers Australia)
Christmas romantic comedies aren’t generally the time of stories to break the genre mold.
And that’s perfectly okay because what you want, I would in fact argue, you need, from these types of tales is that everything that is broken can be fixed, that the lost and lonely will find a home and the unloved will find a place of unconditional, unending love and acceptance, all of it propelled by the undeniable magic of the Christmas season.
Who wants to tinker too much with a recipe so festively delicious and enormously comforting?
So, given that the various pieces of a Christmas rom-com can’t be moved to far out of their assigned order, you do what Joss Wood does quite wonderfully in Confessions of a Christmasaholic – you have some fun with it and inject new life and emotional meaningful into the well-worn tropes and cliches.
In other words, you make it very much your own which Wood does commendably well, offering up a story in which a very much adrift Sutton Alsop ends up in a snowy English town named Conningworth mere weeks from Christmas Day, a long away from her South African home and very much indeed of a new start.
The thing is, she doesn’t plan to get it in said English village; no, her plan is to make it big as an occupational therapist at a prestigious London hospital and carve out for herself a life far from the trauma and emotional exhaustion of her blighted childhood.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sutton noticed a couple of snowmen and candy canes taking flight. Hot Guy shouted what she thought might be a warning. Too little, too late, dude! She heard his filthy curse as the brick path rose to French kiss her face.
Ah man. This would hurt.
And then all the lights went out.
But first, after swinging through Europe on tour – alone alas after her BFF Layla who was supposed to be with her but who has instead betrayed in ways best left to the reading the novel itself – she’s going to hole up in the home of a friend of a friend’s home, wait out Christmas and then tackle London in the New Year.
It seems like a foolproof plan that minimises expediture of funds she no longer has (again, not her fault; our damsel in distress is inherently good and any issues are not of her making) but then fate intervenes, she gets drunk at the village pub and crashes, as unceremoniously as it is possible to do, through the Santa vomited Christmas display of village hero, Gus Langston.
Handsome, thoughtful, emotionally in-touch Gus is an adopted son of the quaint town, thanks to his marriage to the now-sadly dead daughter of local landed gentry Moira (who is a delight), a wonderful dad to two irrepresibly bouncy kids, Felix and Rosie, and the owner and operator of the local yer-round Christmas store.
He isn’t happy, of course, that Sutton has fallen through and wrecked much of his brightly lit festive display but he’s also a very lovely man, and so even though he’s exhausted doing the thousand-and-one things demanded of a local identity and perfect dad, he takes her in, for the night at least, and patches her up, expecting never to see her again.
(courtesy official author site)
But, being a tale of the most wonderful time of the year, fate intervenes with bells on and tinsel unfurled around it, and Sutton and Gus ended up linked together in ways that save both of them and which ensure that the magic of the season has time enough to do its very redemptive thing.
Thus begins Confessions of a Christmasaholic which benefits enormously from Wood’s ability to write sparkling dialogue for characters who may in some ways be set pieces in a fairly conventional rom-com but who nonetheless feel real and complete enough that you want them to find a home with and in each other.
Wood is also winningly adept at bringing together the more than necessary found family to surround the two lost and tired souls who will naturally, and good lord this is not even remotely a spoiler given the genre the book is happily and cosily snuggled into, and so we come to love Gus’s posh but groundedly fun and insightful mother-in-law Moira, his two gorgeous kids and his neighbours, married couple Will and Eli who provided a zestfully queer element to the story without once tipping over into overblown cliche.
The key to the highly enjoyable readability of Confessions of a Christmasaholic is that it stays well and truly within its lane without once feeling like some sort of desultory ticking of the boxes without personality, originality or a cosy sense of fun, the last a crucial element in any festive rom-com.
Gus lifted his head and saw her watching him through the window, and his expression softened. Man, how was she supposed to keep her feet on the ground, when he looked at her like she was all he wanted, the only person he needed?
What gives it extra emotional oomph though is that Wood takes the time to let us into the pasts of both Sutton and Gus without belabouring the fact that each has suffered a great deal of pain, loss and trauma and that they need each other for a fresh, healing start.
The idea of redemption is key to any festive rom-com, indeed the season itself, and you have to establish oyur lead characters as people who have attractive qualities but who very much need someone to help make up for the emotional deficiencies of days gone by.
Wood does this very well, so much so that when Sutton and Gus inevitably draw closer together and the sparks start flying, you are rooting for them to find all the things they lacked in the past in what is sure to be a bright and promising future.
But even here, Wood does a little zig when you might be expecting a zg, and while the expected happy ending, soaked in the promise and wonder of the season, does indeed happen, it’s not at the expense of Sutton’s big dreams nor Gus’s need for some sort of dramtic reinvention.
So, yes they find love, and at Christmas too, but they also keep their innate individual humanity too, which is especially important for Sutton who might find love but who doesn’t necessarily want or need rescuing.
Confessions of a Christmasaholic is a fitting, spicy Christmas joy that more than justifies its occupation of the festive rom-com genre but which has some fun with it and doses its immersively lovely and highly romantic with the kind of grounded humanity which ensures we get our Christmas magic but with a nice dose of real world merry and brightness too.