Pop Culture Puns and Trees by the Ton

Print: Michaels

A cactus is a kind of tree, especially when it's dressed up for Christmas.  Even if it doesn't grow in New Jersey save for in print form on my wall.  Who knows.  If I saw real cacti every day, then maybe I wouldn't like them as much.  Luckily, I'm rooted in the Garden State, which means I'll never need to find out.

Cacti do grow in Idaho, which just happens to be the setting of the last book I read, Codi Hall's There's Something About Merry.  The sequel to Nick and Noel's Christmas Playlist (which I read last year), it centers around the Winters Christmas Tree Farm and the festively-named family that owns it.  Middle child Merry loves the farm so much that she wants to run it someday.  So she's bummed when her dad hires someone else to do just that.  Clark Griffin (who, although not a Winters, isn't immune to the "merry" moniker theme; his favorite holiday flick is Christmas Vacation) is no longer the lanky, long-haired nerd that popular Merry crushed on back in high school.  Now a single dad, he's assertive but still reticent, his quiet nature masking a wound.  Yet when he and Merry connect on a dating app, their chemistry is palpable.  As a writer and an introvert, I love an epistolary getting-to-know-you, and this one is especially sweet.  But perhaps the best thing about it is that it doesn't go on forever.  Merry and Clark discover each other's identities early.  So instead of being the entire story, the online dating trope serves as more of a prologue, building tension and layers.  Because who says romcoms can't be deep?

Not this fool for love.  And cacti. 💖🌵