When her daughter decides not to come home for the holidays, Harriet Smith finds comfort in several mugs of mulled wine, as well as in the arms of a handsome stranger. After covering for some students who break into the local theater, Harriet agrees to compensate for the break-in by cleaning up the theater and directing a production of “A Christmas Carol.” Her co-director: James Knight, the owner’s scowling lawyer, and Harriet’s one-night stand.
I was so disappointed that I didn’t love this book more. I’ve liked other holiday books by Jenny Bayliss so I thought for sure this one would be great but I had a lot of trouble getting into it. I think I just didn’t connect with Harriet. I found her to be a bit judgemental and whiny. She’s one of those people who doesn’t curse but uses other words instead and I kept rolling my eyes every time she would say something like “for flock’s sake”, “son of a biscuit”, “holy shish kabobs”, or “shitake mushrooms”. At that point, I would rather she either curse or don’t curse at all, as long as she stopped with the childish alternatives.
I also thought one of the conflicts that comes up between Harriet and James was a little overblown and that Harriet should not have been so upset. Basically, she finds out James has an adult daughter and she’s mad because he didn’t tell her. But they’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks so I’m not sure what she was expecting. Just because she had already told him her life story, did not entitle her to hear his.
I did really like the students and the rest of the people who show up at the theater. Their stories were so much more interesting than Harriet and James. Maybe if this book had been more about the side characters, I would have liked it more.
The blurb for this book on GoodReads calls it “White Christmas meets Nora Ephron” which I did not get at all. I guess there is a White Christmas connection because they are putting on a play at Christmastime, but I don’t know what in this book was supposed to convey Nora Ephron.
I also thought it was weird that Harriet was always wearing three cardigans at once. I didn’t get it.
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