This year hasn't been what we expected, to say the least, and it was hard to find any escapes from it all. Maybe social media helped make us feel like we were less alone, or maybe we were able to stay in connect with those we loved. But we all dreamed of an escape from this reality, whether that be back to what we consider normal, or to somewhere entirely else. Christina Lauren, seeming to predict our need for an escape, provides the beautiful, holiday-themed vacation from our lives with their newest novel, In a Holidaze. Heartwarming, inspiring, and swoon-worthy, In a Holidaze has the power to remind readers about the power of our voices, the need for family, and how triumph is born from disaster.
Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the New York Times, USA Today, and #1 internationally bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series, Dating You / Hating You, Autoboyography, Love and Other words, Roomies, Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating, My Favorite Half-Night Stand, The Unhoneymooners, Twice in a Blue Moon, and The Honey-Don't List. You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com, @ChristinaLauren on Instagram, or @ChristinaLauren on Twitter.
It's the most wonderful time of the year . . . but not for Maelyn Jones. She's living with her parents, hates her going-nowhere job, and has just made a romantic error of epic proportions. But perhaps worst of all, this is the last Christmas Mae will be at her favorite place in the world: the snowy Utah cabin where she and her family have spent the holidays every year since she was born, along with two other beloved families. Mentally melting down as she drives away from the cabin for the first time, Mae throws out what she thinks is a simple plea to the universe. Please. Show me what will make me happy. The next thing she knows, tires screech and metal collides, everything goes black. But when Mae gasps awake . . . she's on an airplane bound for Utah, where she begins the same holiday all over again. With one hilarious disaster after another, sending her back to the plane, Mae must figure out how to break free of the strange time loop--and finally get her true love under the mistletoe. Jam-packed with yuletide cheer, an unforgettable cast of characters, and Christina Lauren's trademark "downright hilarious" (Helen Hoang, author of The Bride Test) high jinks, this swoon-worthy romantic read will make you believe in the power of wishes and the magic of the holidays.
The holiday magic of this book drew me right in, and I'm honestly not surprised that I chose to read this around Christmastime, the same way I read Emily Henry's Beach Read literally at the beach. This book reminded me of the holiday season's power to make one reevaluate your life choices, and it was Mae's in particular that was on the line. Mae is the kind of person I'm worried about becoming: not really going anywhere, but not really unhappy about it. I think that's a fear for a lot of people, and Christina Lauren really highlights that fear of Mae's. Mae, a creature of tradition and hiding in the shadows, is literally thrown for a loop when her vacation starts again. At first, she wants to vacation to be perfect the way it always has been. But tradition gets her nowhere. It's only when she shakes things up, and becomes the person that she's always wanted to be (but didn't feel like she had the power of becoming), that she's able to find her happily ever after. That speaks to the power of voices, and to how one can only achieve the life they dream of if they take an active stance on their choices. Not that Mae was passive before--she certainly never felt like a passive narrator--but Christina Lauren's ability to highlight Mae's active reaction to her changed situation rather than her passive past allows for us to chart Mae's growth as a character. I enjoyed reading Mae's voice--I was just as surprised, frustrated, excited, and down as she was when specific things happened, making her a relatable main character. Her voice also sucked me right into the story, making this book feel like even more of an escape than I thought.
We know from the start that Mae wants Andrew, but after kissing Theo, it seems like she might be totally out of luck. From the beginning, I was uncertain as to how she would be able to tell Andrew about her feelings--she did kiss his brother, after all. But of course Andrew had been harboring the same feelings for Mae too, and it feel like a storybook, the way these two fall into such an easy, secret romance. Well, maybe not a total storybook, because they have to contend with their mixed families and a time-loop, but excepting that, these two were made for each other. I have really nothing to say about their romance other than I loved it. Friends-to-lovers was well done on Christina Lauren's part. They seemed to avoid the cliche by making it a family-friends-to-lovers, and there wasn't any awkward "getting to know you" stage or "getting over being your friend now that we're lovers" because Andrew and Mae have known each other their whole lives, and have been waiting for each other their whole lives. Christina Lauren writes the romance perfectly--the cheesy moments weren't too cheesy, and the sex scenes were just the right level of steamy. The dialogue was some of my favorite moments, because it felt utterly authentic. This couple was one to cheer for!
One of my favorite parts about the book were the moments when Mae jumped back to the plane, or had to explain herself to her family. Totally bewildered, or sounding completely insane, I would wonder How is she going to get out of this? Despite having read so many books, I found the plot to be as unpredictable as a romance novel plot could be. The happily ever after would be there, but how would we get there? I felt like Christina Lauren threw some romance stereotypes out the window when plotting this one, because I felt like I couldn't see the finish line--and I enjoyed that feeling, of being completely lost and wandering. Anything I found that I didn't quite understand (why were we thrown so fast into the families, I couldn't keep them straight? or Why does her job feel like a detail just added in because she's twenty-six and should have a job?) were things I could reason out on my own. We had to be thrown into the family because duh how many of us often feel like we're thrown in during family events? and also, it would slow down the exposition and Mae's desire to find what makes her happy if she goes through and explains each family member before moving forward. And yes, a twenty-six year old should have a job (hopefully), but Mae's total and utter not-fascination with the job is part of the problem--going in depth about it, or explaining it as part of her identity (versus how digital art is part of her identity) would be fake and not character development related whatsoever. I greatly enjoyed how literary Christina Lauren could be, especially in just those two instances. It tunes us in that even though we're reading a romance novel, a lot of thought, time, plotting, and development went into every single detail, character, and plot twist than we probably can imagine. Being able to read into those things was pure magic, from a "reader who wants to work in book publishing" standpoint, for sure!
After this read, I really want to get my hands on more of Christina Lauren's work, like The Unhoneymooners or Autoboyography. For more Christina Lauren, check out their website, ChristinaLaurenBooks.com.
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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