⭐⭐⭐
My opinion of It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas kept changing while I read it; I started out
skeptical, grew to enjoy it, then got a bit annoyed with it again at the
end. It's probably more of a 3.5, but I can't bring myself to round up
to 4 stars.
Mally works in internal communications, but for
various plot reasons, winds up being told to write a feature piece for
the website she works for--she's a big fan of Hallmark-type Christmas
movies, so is sent out to experience Christmas in a village and see how
many tropes she can check off her list. But lurking beneath this light
concept is the heart of the story, which is that Mally returns to her
hometown for the first time since the death of her younger sister when
Mally was away at uni.
I appreciated that author Hayley Dunlop didn't have
Mally realize that Hallmark movies are bad; instead, Mally comes to
understand why exactly people keep going back to them--the focus on
family and community, the predictability that allows people to feel safe
in a world of chaos and uncertainty. She finds comfort in them, she
bonds with others over them. They're good!
I also mostly liked
Mally relationship with Tom, her high school crush. Naturally it turns
out that he had also had a crush on her. He winds up falling into the
"too perfect" characterization that so often happens in these books, but
the two of them did have really good chemistry. They were adorable.
(Also,
oddly enough, this is the second book in a row that I've read where the
male lead's father left the mother because the mother had MS.)
Mally's
growth in her hometown is good. It was nice seeing her reconnect and
her journey to begin to grapple with her sister's death 20 years earlier
was well done. The whole family basically shut down after Livvie's
death, which is wholly believable, and I liked how Mally started to
reconsider their reactions, confront what had happened, and reevaluate. I
particularly liked how Mally wasn't the only one who felt guilt about
what happened.
I think my problems with the book largely revolve
around the treatment of Elle, Mally's best friend. One of the tropes on
Mally's bingo card (linked here) is "Annoying best friend," which is honestly opposite
of what's on my own personal Hallmark bingo card--I tend to think of
the friends in the movies being way cooler than the leads, and I have
more than once wound up rooting for them. (Mally's bingo card, in
general, is very different from my own list of tropes, which may have
also colored my reaction to this book.) Elle moved in next door when
Mally was in Year 9, I think, making her somewhere in her early teens.
She does honestly seem like she was awful as a teenager, and Mally winds
up coming to a fairly nuanced view of her, but others' perceptions--and
her depiction late in the book--make me wonder what we're supposed to
think of her, and how she affected Mally.
There is a lot of
nuance in this book, which is a good thing. But it didn't quite hit the
right notes for me. But still worth a read, I think. (Plus the writing
was a bit clunky at times.)
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