Hallowed Ground Bound: Home is Where the Hart Is

It isn't Christmas without Jenny Bayliss.  Her heartwarming romcoms are everything that make the holidays happy.  So of course her latest, I'll be Home for Christmas, cozily captures that comfort and joy.

Fredericka "Fred" Hallow-Hart is in freefall.  Instead of crushing it as an ad exec in London, she's fired and dumped with no place to go.  So she heads home to Pine Bluff, Scotland to live with her mum and eccentric aunts.  To her, it's a huge step down, and she's less than gracious about it.  But after much deliberation and self-flagellation, she deigns to help with their Christmas cracker business.  Indeed, despite being in her mid-thirties, Fred has a lot of growing up to do.  But first she must confront her past, which includes Ryan Frost.  As kids, Fred and Ryan were inseparable.  Then Ryan rejected Fred's kiss, and their friendship fizzled.  Now Ryan's a small business mogul and eager to be in Fred's life.  But so is a handsome journalist, and Fred becomes entangled in a love triangle that tests her loyalties.

Wreathed in charm and second chances, I'll be Home for Christmas is the holiday hug we all need.  I was particularly taken with Hallow-Hart Crackers.  Fred's mum designs the prints on the wrappers, then fills each cracker with locally sourced, handmade treasures.  It's creative and fun and authentic and had me itching to get back to my jewelry making.  Fred gets bewitched too, using her advertising savvy to give Hallow-Hart's socials a glow-up.  Because Hallow-Hart Crackers is more than a business.  It's community and hope and home.

Just like Jenny Bayliss.

Second Act Pact: Put a Little Love in Your Art

I was so busy this December that I almost forgot to read Jenny Bayliss's latest.  Known for releasing a heartfelt romcom each Christmas, the Brit lit wit  never fails to make me smile through my Santa-induced stress.  So when I spied a lone copy of Kiss Me at Christmas while tornadoing through Target, I snagged it. 

Teacher-turned-pastoral care worker Harriet Smith is in dire need of a change.  Overworked and underappreciated, she's always on call and haunted by the one student she couldn't save.  And this Christmas her nerves are especially fraught because her daughter's spending the holiday stateside.  Lonely and vulnerable, triple-cardigan-wearing Harriet embarks on a one night stand.  Then, fresh off the walk of shame, she finds her most at-risk students, a.k.a. the "famous five," playing hooky in the abandoned Winter Theater.  

When her students get caught, she takes the blame and, per the eccentric old woman who owns the theater, cleans it up to avoid charges.  Yet what starts as community service snowballs into a production of A Christmas Carol.  Harriet leads, inspires, and energizes the famous five, a local theater group, and various disenfranchised community clubs including refugees, treasure hunters, and self-proclaimed "lonely farts" into putting on the best show ever.  Also, there's the guy from Harriet's one night stand, who just happens to be the eccentric woman's lawyer.       

It's nice when Christmas has a sense of humor.

Still, Kiss Me at Christmas is more than a romcom.  It's about self-care and community, two things that sound as though they'd be at odds but are, oddly, intertwined.  Because it's only when Harriet allows herself to be at peace that she's able to bring peace to others.  And yes, perhaps, fall in love.  

Big-hearted and hilarious, Kiss Me at Christmas is Bayliss's best book yet.  Because everyone deserves a second act.  Especially at Christmas.

Season's Readings: A Novel Noel

Somehow, it's December.  And I still haven't started decorating.  This pic is from last year, which is kind of like it being from this year because the fireplace will look the same.  Then again, the last month of the year isn't just for decking the halls -- it's for season's readings!  And I'm excited to kick off the Kringle book club with Jenny Bayliss's A December to Remember and Mary Kay Andrews's The Santa Suit.

A December to Remember is just as cozy as its cover.  (So, nothing like those Lexus commercials.  Who buys a car at Christmas, let alone a Lexus?!).  Three estranged sisters reconvene in the idyllic English countryside of Rowan Thorp to carry out the terms of their late father's will.  A wanderlust-struck eccentric, Augustus North sends salt-of-the-earth Maggie, sophisticated Simone, and free-spirited Star scrambling on a scavenger hunt to claim the money that he cached for them to resurrect Rowan Thorp's famed winter solstice celebration.  In working together, they squabble but ultimately reconnect, which is perhaps (insert heart emojis) the biggest prize of all.  A December to Remember is on brand for Bayliss and is just the kind of quirky, hipster fairy tale that warms my heart at this time of year. 

Similarly, The Santa Suit sparkles with poignant nostalgia.  City girl Ivy Perkins moves to a North Carolina farmhouse to heal from her divorce.  Yet Four Roses Farm turns out to need more love than Ivy anticipated.  Luckily, her realtor Ezra Wheeler is only too happy to help her with her busted hot water heater and drafty windows.  What's more, Ivy finds a beautiful Santa suit in a closet with a note tucked inside.  All Carlette wants for Christmas is for her father to return from Vietnam.  Touched, Ivy sets out to uncover what happened to Carlette and her family.  Along the way, she makes two life-changing friends and finds the home she always wanted.  Andrews weaves small-town charm, seasonal suspense, and old-fashioned romance with all the Christmas magic of a ribbon glittering through evergreen.  Short but sweet, The Santa Suit is a joy to read, making you believe that, in December, all things are possible.

Hopefully, that extends to me getting that tree up. 

A Horticulturist's Holiday: Planting Kisses and Kindness

No holiday reading list is complete without a book from Jenny Bayliss.  Last year I enjoyed A Season of Second Chances, and the year before that The Twelve Dates of Christmas.  So when I found Bayliss' Meet Me Under the Mistletoe on Amazon, I was delighted.

When Elinor "Nory" Noel leaves her beloved secondhand London bookshop to attend her friends' wedding in her hometown, it's with mixed emotions.  The week-long celebration is being held in a castle and will put her back in the thick of her private school circle.  Nory attended the prestigious school on scholarship, and despite her bond with the seven students who helped shape her formative years, the disparity in their social standing has always made her feel a little bit less than.  What's more, she comes from a family of proud working-class tree farmers, and part of her has always felt that attending private school created distance between them.  Finally, Nory and her friends are mourning Tristan, whom they lost to suicide last year.  They knew that he suffered from depression, but didn't realize how deeply.  Nory, who has weathered her own bouts of mental instability, feels his absence keenly.  And then she falls into a wheelbarrow of manure and comes face to face with her frenemy, Isaac Malik.  

Isaac is the castle's head gardener.  He's also Nory's brother's best friend.  Yet although Isaac has nothing but disdain for Nory's wealthy pals, he's very taken with Nory.  And the feeling is mutual.  With their shared background in plants and love of reading, the two have a lot in common.  At one point, Nory defends her massive book collection by saying ' "Keeping books is not hoarding!  . . . It's protecting history.  The written word is the key to the secrets of this world and all the worlds that live in our minds." ' (Bayliss 202-203)  As their romance, ahem, blossoms, Isaac trusts Nory enough to tell her that his great-great-grandmother's employer stole her original artwork and passed it off as her own.  Impetuous and passionate about justice, Nory burns to right this wrong.  But Isaac is private and doesn't want help from Nory -- or her influential friends.  What happens next will determine if Nory and Isaac's relationship has the grit of a winter garden, or if it's as fragile as a summer rose.       

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe is so much more than a Christmas romance.  In Nory, Bayliss gives us a multi-dimensional heroine who's dealing with a lot.  Although festive and sometimes very funny, hers isn't a Hallmark world where conflict melts like chocolate chip cookies.  It's a hothouse of holiday expectations haunted by the mental health struggles that people face all year, but especially in December.  You can't help but want good things for Nory, a sensitive bibliophile caught between her roots and the dazzling world of privilege just out of reach.

I don't know about you, but I'll never look at mistletoe the same way again.

A Cozy Snooze for Winter Blues: It Takes a Village, People

Could winter get any cozier than snuggling up in a seaside English cottage?  In this always-cold blogger's opinion, yes!  Once upon a time, I lived at the beach, and come winter, it was bitingly bitter.  I imagine that U.K. beach winters are even more frigid.  But Jenny Bayliss's A Season for Second Chances sends us on a glacial getaway that doesn't chill to the bone; if anything, it offers the warmest of hearths, radiating comfort and joy.  Last December, I read and loved Bayliss's debut novel, The Twelve Dates of Christmas.  So, when I heard about Bayliss's sophomore book, I knew it'd be just as winsome.    

Star restauranteur Annie Sharpe's life is turned upside down when she catches her husband with a waitress.  Unable to look the other way this time -- Max has strayed before, although Annie's never had to see it -- she leaves London for remote Willow Bay to look after an elderly stranger's cottage.  Which sounds crazy.  But a disappearing act is just what Annie needs.  And the denizens of her new beach village are only too happy to help her.  (So much for British reserve!)  Part of me is always surprised when this sort of story captivates me -- I mean, I'm the kind of person who avoids not only strangers, but people I know.  Yet then I remember that in books like this (unlike real life!), almost everyone has good intentions.  In A Season for Second Chances, that goes double for everyone, including the homeless guy camping out in Annie's tearoom.  Before you get the wrong idea, no, he's not her curmudgeonly love interest.  That would be the big, bad developer (okay, the big, bad developer's friend) who's itching to bulldoze the cottage.  

For yes, this book has some romance.  Bayliss serves it up along with delectable baked goods and enough tangy humor to keep your teeth from rotting.  Even Annie's grown sons are well-adjusted and funny, an affable pair of twins supportive of their mother's new-found independence.  No boys club vibes in this village!

That said, A Season for Second Chances is an engaging mix of old-fashioned charm and modern mores, making for an enlightened, rural, feel-good yarn.  

Which is my way of saying that it's a story well worth being marooned with.

Christmas Book Nook: Courting Cozy

Now that December's well underway, it's time for -- yes -- season's readings!  And the first novel I crossed off my list was The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Jenny Bayliss.  Full of light-hearted warmth, Dates is the story of singleton Kate Turner.  Kate lives in a storybook village outside of London where everyone knows everyone else.  Also, she's thirty-four and looking for love.  Or rather, her friend Laura is looking for love for her -- in the form of signing her up for a dating service that pairs her with a dozen suitors leading up to Christmas.  Kate is clear that she doesn't need a man.  As an artist for Liberty of London and baker for her friend Matt's charmingly named Pear Tree Café (insert partridge joke), she's got more than enough going on.  But resistance, as they say, is futile, and before she knows it, she's off to cooking lessons, gingerbread house building contests, and escape rooms with a mixed bag of bachelors, divorced dudes, and a few Lotharios looking for a good time.  Matt, however, thinks it's all a bad idea.  He's over-protective, especially given that he and Kate had a mysterious falling out years ago, as the Brits say, at uni.  Anyway, it's none of his business, as he's got a girlfriend of his own.      

I think you see where this is going.

Still, like the dried fruit itself (bring on the produce puns), The Twelve Dates of Christmas is that rare treat that stokes your holiday spirit without making you want to throw up.  It's got the heart of a Hallmark movie, only funny and not fussy (i.e. there's some sex), two qualities, if you ask me, that those card store-branded features are lacking.  I'm especially glad that I stumbled upon Bayliss's book because last Christmas I read one too many romances that took place on ranches.  Mucking out the stalls does not a happy holiday make.  Dates, on the other hand, is full of comfort and joy, with Kate, Matt, and company downing an inordinate amount of baked goods and hot chocolate and decorating the wilds of their village with, as they put it, baubles.  What's more, Bayliss's writing is rich yet breezy, making the most of Kate's story and the yuletide theme.

Here on the holiday home front, I'm slower to deck the halls.  But the husband did haul up the decorations from the basement yesterday, and as soon as I saw the boxes, I wanted to find and photograph what he refers to as my "tree farm": 

This isn't where they'll stay, neon backdrop pics being figments of fantasyland.  I'll plant them firmly in front of the fireplace, once I get around to the rest of those boxes.

Which won't, of course, be until after I've disappeared into yet another Christmas caper.