A solidly Plot-ted thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

More of a 3.75; The Plot is definitely closer to 4 stars than 3 stars.

Jacob Bonner had a promising debut novel, a disappointing follow-up, and then found himself wandering the world of a novelist who doesn't really have another one in him...but doesn't have the skills for anything else. So he winds up teaching at a program where a student tells him the plot for the novel he's working on; Bonner realizes that the student is right, the plot is guaranteed to be a hit, but over the years, the novel never appears. After finding the student died, Bonner writes the book himself (using just the central conceit of the book) and becomes a celebrity novelist, getting the fame, fortune, and even love he didn't really think was possible. But he's living with the guilt of having stolen the idea.

Of course, ideas can't be stolen; as is detailed in the book, you can only copyright actual written material. Even so, Bonner has a hard time living with himself. He knows that he did the work of writing the book himself, and after years of teaching and doing online writing consulting, he is very well aware that someone having an idea for a book is very different than actually writing it. I wonder how much of the guilt was because the student was a competent writer; not a great one, but decent.

We do learn the big twist of the plot eventually, for which I was very relieved; there's a lot of talk in the book about how it's this huge can't miss idea, guaranteed to be picked up and directed by a big name, will definitely sell millions, etc. And when I got to the twist, it was...you know, good. It's a solid story. It's not something that's never been done before, certainly (and I listen to and read enough true crime to know that it's something that has happened in real life many times). Is it a good story? Yes. I don't know that it would help Bonner to realize that the book probably wouldn't have been as big a hit if the student had written it; Bonner has the training and experience of being a good writer to turn the book into a hit. Like, I'm sure other people had probably written Gone Girl-like books before Gillian Flynn did; they just didn't go anywhere.

So I found the beginning of the book more interesting than the rest, when Bonner starts poking around the student's life after getting "You're a thief" messages from someone online. I loved the look into the writing program where he taught and how it just kept getting sadder over the years; I loved him setting himself up as a writing consultant online and working at a hotel-turned-writer's-retreat. I honestly probably would've been happy with a book about him working at that hotel, trying to eke out a life that way.

The ending worked for me, though I got a bit frustrated with Bonner not putting certain pieces together sooner in the story. Of course, it is hard when you're the main character in a story because you don't realize you are the main character of a story, and that your life will involve twists of its own.

A compelling thriller. I'll probably pick up The Sequel at some point.

Romance round up

⭐⭐⭐ 

I enjoy author Olivia Dade's writing and particularly enjoyed At First Spite, the first book in this series, so I was very excited for Second Chance Romance to come out. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.

Molly moved a ton growing up, so she learned not to put down roots and make attachments. But in high school, she wound up in Harlot's Bay, Maryland, where she became friends with Karl. They liked each other and almost kissed, but neither pursued it and Molly abruptly moved across the country. They stayed in touch for a bit, but eventually, 20 years have passed and Molly and Karl haven't spoken. Then Molly hears Karl died, so she heads back to Maryland. He's very much alive, very much wants her to stick around, and they are both very very bad at communicating.

The basic conflict is good. Molly and Karl both suck at communicating. Molly has some pretty solid reasons; Karl shows his feelings via actions, but is truly terrible at actually talking to people. I probably would have liked this a bit more if Karl were literally better at talking; a lot of his dialogue is in sentence fragments, which just grated on me after a while. And I guess some people are just like this, but it kind of bothered me that there wasn't any backstory about why Karl, for example, was sick with flu for a week and told literally nobody about it, even though they were checking in on him. He doesn't listen when people try to tell him things, and I was a bit turned off when, very early into Molly's time in Harlot's Bay, he told her that he wanted her to move across the country for him. (But not saying it would be "for him," of course.) At that point, he didn't know much about her life in LA and it just struck me as incredibly presumptuous.

Molly, happily, is much more likeable, even if she is also a grump. Her backstory made sense to bring her to the place where she is in the book. She spends the book trying to figure out whether she trusts Karl and examining her feelings and trying to determine what could change her mind (and heart). Her journey felt real to me. Karl, on the other hand, naturally has some revelations late in the book, but I just never really warmed up to him.

Still, I like the world of Harlot's Bay. I'd love to read a book about Lise.

---

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I had already gotten A Novel Love Story home from the library when I noticed it's by, Ashley Poston, the author of The Dead Romantics, which I quite enjoyed. The premise intrigued me--lost in a storm in New York's Catskills, Elsy takes an exit and winds up in what she realizes is the town from her favorite romance series. Everything and everyone is familiar, except Anders, the town's bookstore owner...who also happens to be the only other one to know that they're in a fictional town.

I really liked this. The romance series isn't done--the author died in a car crash between books 4 and 5--and Elsy finds a town that's stuck. Poston explores whether happily ever afters actually are and the perils of a town in stasis. She grapples with grief, over the death of a loved one and the death of a relationship. She examines how people need to be careful to remain themselves in relationships, both romantic and friendship, and how easy it can be to just try to be go along and coast in the wake of someone else.

I loved Elsy getting to interact with her favorite characters and I think Poston did a good job handling the details of the magical fictional town (e.g., details like WiFi and cell coverage). Elsy has to deal with the fact that she's interacting with people whom she knows intimately but has to act like she doesn't; she has to try not to butterfly effect anything, but it's hard to not blurt out what you think after spending years reading and re-reading and discussing. And getting comments from the various characters on what their lives are actually like was great; glimpses of authorial intent vs. reality for the characters. And I liked the reveal at the end of the book about Anders, as well as Elsy figuring out what to do with her own life. I liked how much this was about friendship.

That said, I do wish we had actually seen some of the minor characters; they were mentioned, and there were a few group scenes, but I don't think any of them even had a line in the book. I also got frustrated with Elsy a few times in the book for not figuring out a few things more quickly (mostly just about where she has cell service in town). I think Poston managed to make Eloraton come across as less twee than the town in Dead Romantics--though it probably is that twee in the actual series--there were a still a few elements that were a bit much. But the artifice of the premise helped.

Still, I read the vast majority of this book in one sitting. A good balance of high-concept and real emotion. 

Looking back to King for a road ahead

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I never know whether it's encouraging or depressing to read books about history and feel hit over the head again and again with parallels to what we're dealing with today.

This biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., is fantastic. Author Jonathan Eig does an amazing job truly bringing King to life. He never puts King up on a pedestal; his King is fully human and his more problematic traits--particularly his womanizing and his plagiarizing--are addressed throughout the book. (Also, and it comes up a lot, King was not tall. He was 5'7". People throughout the book are like, "He was shorter than I expected.")

Eig brings home that King never really planned what wound up being his career in civil rights; he wanted to preach, maybe go into academia. (I wonder how that would've affected his plagiarism?) He basically wound up caught up in events; he knew he wanted to preach in a Southern church, but it was luck or fate or what-have-you that brought him to a church in Montgomery, Alabama to be there for the bus boycott.

Reading the book, it also hit home how much King (and other leaders) were winging it. They'd try to create organizations but didn't really have much in the way of plans or goals or methodology. Decisions frequently were made spontaneously, which was understandably frustrating for many people involved. And King wound up walking a tightrope of the fight for civil rights while trying to leverage his relationship with the Kennedys/LBJ. He was blasted by other activists as not doing enough; he was blasted by many as being too radical. And there was no clear path for what he was trying to do.

His commitment to nonviolence was striking. He was attacked and literally kept his arms at his sides. Eig takes us on King's journey; his thoughts weren't always on nonviolence being the best path, but when he committed, he committed. His acceptance of his own death also made an impression. There was just so much violence all around him, from the violence during marches to bombs being thrown into people's home and churches to activists getting murdered, King knew his own murder was inevitable, particularly as the 1960s progressed. He was under so much stress, felt all the pressure of winning the Nobel Peace Prize and being Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader everyone looked to, agonized over the knowledge that the FBI was trying to plant stories in the media about his adultery and what that could mean for him (not to mention the FBI trying to get him to kill himself, good Lord, J. Edgar Hoover really was the worst). It all weighed on him as he took the civil rights battle to the north, where he discovered people were just as bad as in the South. Some people thought his job was done, with various civil rights bills signed into law, but he saw more and more how much needed to change. He became more radical in his thinking, speaking out against the Vietnam War, which Eig points out again and again was still fairly popular with the general population, and more people hated him and he felt he wasn't doing enough and he was tired. There was so much to do, and he knew he didn't have much time.

King's gift was in his words, both spoken and written. The story of "Letter From Birmingham Jail" was fascinating, but what impressed me about Eig's storytelling is how he managed to convey King's speeches and preaching via the written word. His descriptions of how King actually spoke was stellar. And I just wanted to go through and underline so much of what King said because it remains powerful and applicable. His words resonate today as they did 60 years ago.

This book is incredibly worth the read. Eig's narrative is engaging; it's a big book, but it goes quickly. And the acknowledgments and notes are also worth a look.

I'll end with how Eig ends his story:

Young people hear his dream of brotherhood and his wish for children to be judged by the content of their character, but not his call for fundamental change in the nation's character, not his cry for an end to the triple evils of materials, militarism, and racism.

...Where do we go from here? In spite of the way America treated him, King still had faith when he asked that question. Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King, the human King, the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before.

"Our very survival," he wrote, "depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

Amen. (pp. 556-557)

Hallmark Movie Roundup: The Weekend of Hallmark Movies

A friend and I got an Airbnb for the weekend and pretty much spent the entire time just watching Hallmark movies (and snacking). It was glorious and I highly recommend it to everyone. I don't have the energy to do full posts about each movies, but obviously I must share some thoughts.

For Love & Honey (2024): Andrew Walker is an archaeology professor in Malta, looking for something mentioned in an old manuscript. The treasure is bees, which he discovers with the help of a local beekeeper who runs a successful apiary. Whatever money the Malta tourism board paid for this movie was well worth it; Malta looked gorgeous. And Andrew Walker looks hot in sunglasses, so it's a win-win.
Dead Mother: Yes 

The Magic of Lemon Drops (2024): Lolly works at a restaurant with her father, who won't let her alter the menu in literally any way. Her aunt, who is #LifeGoals, gives Lolly four magic lemon drops--she can use three to see what her life could be and the fourth to choose to stay in one of those lives. The moral of this story is that if you manage to save one of your parents by a wish, the other will be dead in the alternate timeline. I appreciate that she rejected one timeline because it meant stifling her love interest's goals. That said, the logistics of the movie were confusing (the love interest worked for the Columbus Blue Jackets but was moving to a "cottage" in upstate Michigan). 
Dead Mother: Yes

The Snow Must Go On (2025): Isaiah had starred in an original Broadway production unspecified years ago, but he's now down on his luck, so agrees to spend Christmas with his sister and niece upstate...and then agrees to write and direct his niece's Christmas pageant in hopes of catching the eye of a Broadway producer. I kept going back and forth on whether I thought Isaiah was the worst and they dropped a subplot with a kid that I thought was going somewhere, but they did hire an actual Broadway actor and allowed him to sing.
Dead Mother: It probably mentioned the siblings' parents, but I don't remember the details. I'll just assume dead. Or retired in Florida. But probably dead.

Beverly Lewis' The Reckoning (2015): It turned out this was the third movie in a trilogy, but we just powered through. Katie/Katherine was raised Amish, fell in love with Daniel, was supposed to marry a bishop but didn't after she thought Daniel died, found her (non-Amish) birth mother, inherited her mother's many money and huge house, got shunned from the Amish, and is now running a charitable foundation with boyfriend Justin...when Daniel returns from the dead. This movie was nuts and Katie just needed a lot of therapy and to choose herself, but naturally that isn't what happened, even though Daniel came off as a creepy, incel stalker. Also, her household staff were probably a bit too overly involved in her life.
Dead Mother: Yes

Cozy Hallmark-watching vibes.

The Professional Bridesmaid (2023): Maggie is a professional bridesmaid (do we ever learn how she became one? No. Did it bother me the whole time? Yes. At least in Stacy Birchall's The Secret Bridesmaid, you get the full backstory) who gets hired to be a bridesmaid for the daughter of the mayor of Columbus, so she has to juggle fairly normal professional bridesmaid stuff with trying to keep a reporter covering the wedding from questioning the mayor about his views on a proposed condo development. Honestly pretty cute and enjoyable except for my annoyance at not having her backstory and the usual annoyance at writers not really thinking about what scaling her business would actually look like.
Dead Mother: Yes

Blind Date Book Club (2024): Meg runs a bookstore on Nantucket that's become known for doing a book club that uses that "wrapped in brown paper so you don't know the title, just a pithy description" method. Again, we have no idea what the logistics of this are--it honestly makes no sense how it's presented in the movie--and they also somehow seem to have multiple book clubs a week, and those book clubs involved free food and alcohol and activities like flower arranging or painting. Anyway, she's featured on NPR and YA bestselling author Graham Sterling decides to try to get the club to read his new book, which is a historical romance. I quite liked the discussion of what makes a book successful, and Meg was able to point to Graham why his books worked even though she herself wasn't particularly a fan. Also, Meg is debating whether she actually wants to run the bookstore; she was good at selling real estate in Boston, and she enjoyed it. I mean, obviously she's going to keep the bookstore on Nantucket, but the movie made her questioning believable. My other quibble is how much they were outside in a Nantucket winter.
Dead Mother: Yes

The Wedding Cottage (2023): Vanessa runs a wedding...guide...website...thing? and has published a wedding guidebook. To promote her site/service/thing, her company has a contest for a free wedding; the winners want to have their wedding a cottage in Vermont that has hosted weddings for generations. Only problem is that it closed 5 years ago, and the current owner, Evan, a Fancy New York Artist Who's Hiding, has let it go to pot and has no interest in reopening. But naturally he does. The Vermont location was cute, the third-act conflict was annoying, and the vagueness of what Vanessa's business actually is was beyond frustrating. Too twee, all around.
Dead Mother: Unclear, but since Evan inherited the cottage from his grandparents, I can only assume his parents are dead

3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost (2023): Anna and Elliot broke up and dissolved their business, so now Anna is trying to be a real estate agent in her dad's agency while Elliot works to get a local building designated as being historic. Anna's first listing is a 100-year-old house that's been uninhabited since the 1950s and is haunted by the owners' daughter, Ruby, who died in 1923. The relationship between Ruby and Anna was honestly fun, but Anna was frustrating to watch. It's clear she shouldn't be a real estate agent, but it isn't clear what she should be, and I get that's how life is for a lot of people, but I don't really feel the movie handled her journey well. Elliot was great, though.
Dead Mother:Again, I can only assume. Anna's mother isn't around and wasn't mentioned that I remember.

The Wish Swap (2025): Casey and Henry have the same birthday; at a restaurant, they wind up blowing out their birthday candles into each other's faces and then the other's birthday wish comes true...for them. So Casey, an executive recruiter, winds up inheriting a farm (with goats!), while Henry gets cast on a television dancing competition. Kudos for executing the set-up; they quickly realize what's happened and Casey having Henry run the inherited farm and Henry agrees to partner with Casey. The dancing contest premise doesn't really make sense, nor does the timeline, nor do some of the details of Casey's job (and the distances between places and also where is the dancing show filed?), but it was cute. I may have been swayed by the choreographed dances.
Dead Mother: Yes

Netflix's show about President Garfield is Lightning in a bottle

I've spent the last 10 years recommending Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard to people, particularly when I'm volunteering at Ford's Theatre. Most people don't know anything about President James A. Garfield, much less about his assassin; before reading that book, I only really knew what I had learned from Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell and the musical Assassins. The book is fantastic; go read it.

So naturally I was VERY excited when I saw that Netflix was released a limited-run series based on it, titled Death by Lightning (from a letter written by Garfield, in which he noted that "Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning"), and prayed that it would be better than Apple TV's Manhunt. Of course, being much less versed in Garfield assassination lore than in Lincoln, I knew I wouldn't be turning quite the same critical eye on it--particularly since it has been almost 10 years since I read the book.

Matthew Macfadyen (Charles Guiteau) and Michael Shannon (James Garfield). (Larry Horicks/Netflix)

I was struck that, like Manhunt, the tv adaptation told a pretty different story than the book did. There's maybe 40 minutes left in the series when Charles Guiteau shoots President Garfield, which seems like an odd choice, because one of the remarkable things about the Garfield assassination is how very long it took Garfield to die (more than 2 months). Another fascinating piece is the Guiteau trial, one of the first major trials where it looked like the insanity defense could come into play.

One of the biggest things I remember from Destiny is the involvement of Alexander Graham Bell--his history, his inventions, his motivation to try to help find the bullet lodged inside of the President. In Lightning, he's basically a cameo.

I do wish the show had spent more time after the shooting. But the story the show wanted to tell was, for some reason, the clash between Garfield and Roscoe Conkling. It makes some sense, in today's world, to want to tell the story of Garfield, who seems to have been an excellent person, fighting the political machine and winning. If there's a takeaway from this story, it's that the spoils system is bad. And especially right now, it's good that people (a) learn what the spoils system is and (b) learn that it's bad.

The show does a good job of weaving Guiteau through the story. We only get flashes of his life before 1880, but it's enough. Macfadyen's portrayal is pretty much exactly as I've picture Charles Guiteau--enthusiastic and off-putting and sometimes charming but a bit strange. It's truly a fantastic performance. The flashes of anger, of betrayal; his convictions; the way he writes his story in his head, it's all there. There are moments when you feel bad for him, but then he goes and does something and you're out.

Honestly, the entire cast is fantastic. There's a lot of great performances, including Michael Shannon as Garfield, Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur (and I feel like Arthur historians undoubtedly were yelling at their televisions throughout the show; I know virtually nothing about the man and still feel like liberties were clearly taken with his story), Bradley Whitford as James Blaine, Betty Gilpin as Lucretia Garfield. Like, yes, thank you, I do want to watch Josh Lyman and Ron Swanson go at it! And when Gilpin's Crete confronts Macfadyen's Guiteau while he's in jail...that scene was amazing. I'm sure it never happened, but I don't care. 

Do I wish the show reflected Millard's book better? Absolutely. Do I plan on recommending it to anyone and everyone, particularly when I'm volunteering at Ford's Theatre? Also yes. Seriously, go watch this show; it's only four episodes and is well worth your time. 

On change and book-tracking

In which you get to work through my thought process with me. 

Like many others, I'm trying to use Amazon less. For a long time, my line in the sand in buying stuff from Amazon was books; as someone who works in publishing, and who deals with the fulfillment and distribution side of it, I know how bad Amazon is for publishers. (And just to work with, in general, from that side. Ugh! My go-to answer for "What's the least favorite part of your job?" in interviews has been "Dealing with Amazon," and it pretty much always gets a knowing laugh.)

But there's a book-related entity that's owned by Amazon that I use regularly and keep trying to ignore its ownership: Goodreads. I joined Goodreads in 2010, three years before its purchase by Amazon. And it's always had its controversies, but still. At some point I got bored and inputted my reading history, going back to 2004. 

There are alternatives, I know, the most prominent being The StoryGraph, which I try not to judge too much for the "The" in its name. (I'm sure it was so they could get the web domain or some other valid reason.) I tried to do StoryGraph maybe a year or so ago. I ported over all my data, so I wouldn't lose everything. But I just find it incredibly not user-friendly. Some of that undoubtedly is my own resistance to change.

I admit I like re-reading the reviews I've written for books; someone mentions a book and I'm like, "Oh, I've read that! What did I think about it?" (which is why I write reviews for pretty much everything I read nowadays; I'm mad at my past self for not writing down my thoughts and now I don't remember anything about the book). On Goodreads, if I pull up a book that I've written a review of, it pops right up, followed by reviews from other people.

On StoryGraph, the review is there. You just have to hunt for it.

And I'm sure I'd get used to clicking on the little "see review" in the upper right. It's just that I'd rather see that--or others' comments on the book--than what they actually have on the main page:

I...do not particularly care about any of that. Or, I do, but I definitely will not consult StoryGraph when I'm figuring out what to read, though I'm sure many do. There are times when I'm more in the mood for plot-driven than character-driven, and I'm sure rating this kind of thing is helpful for many other readers. It really comes down to wishing that I could customize the page. 

I'm also annoyed that if I go to thestorygraph.com on my browser, it assumes I'm not logged in, so I sign in--in a new window--and it's all, "You're already signed it." Dude, I know. I just need to learn to go to app.thestorygraph.com.

That said, even just playing around on the site has gotten me more familiar with how it works, which is good. I also quite like the Stats page they have and that you can give books half (or quarter!) stars. 

Honestly, the biggest hurdle to totally switching is that pretty much all my friends are on Goodreads. I like seeing what they're reading and reading their reviews. Right now I only have one friend on Storygraph; I guess if you want to join there, feel free to friend me--my handle there is @editbarb. We can all see whether I get bored enough to load the books I've read since...um, November 2024. Sigh. And then stay active.

It's also interesting seeing what other options are out there. For example, NetGalley, which I sometimes use to get advance reader copies of books, has launched Booktrovert. They aren't really going for the same vibe; they're less about tracking books and more about discovering books through giveaways or sweepstakes, getting preorder offers, actually reading books through their platform, playing games, participating in reading challenges, and that kind of thing (per their "About" page). You can track books there (and categorize them in "Stacks"), but it doesn't look like you can even rate them, much less write reviews.

It is kind of neat. I'm always pro offers of free books, and you can create cute virtual bookshelves and do bingo cards for reading challenges. They also have book-related merch, which is also fun. It's probably smart of them to not challenge Goodreads in the book tracking sector but instead offer something adjacent with the reach they have of NetGalley. 

There are other sites/apps, too, like Fable, Bookmory (seems to be app-only), Hardcover, LibraryThing, Bookwyrm, Bookly, and more. It's enough to make me wish I had the energy to evaluate all of them to see what matches best for what I want.

Though as I said, one of the biggest drawbacks to leaving Goodreads would be losing my friends there. I could always just keep getting the Goodreads emails to see what people are up to...we'll see. 

Booktok pick not hitting for me

⭐⭐⭐

I don't believe I've read romantasy before, not even going back to The Mists of Avalon or Mercedes Lackey; I'm not huge into fantasy, really, but the concept for Assistant to the Villain looked cute and the series was on my sister's shelf when I visited, so it was easy enough to borrow.

The premise of the book is good: Evie Sage winds up working as the executive assistant for The Villain (whose real name we learn thankfully early in the book) through Circumstances. This is a world where many people, though not all, have magical powers; there are dragons and other creatures and kings and sort of a standard fantasy set-up. The plot ultimately becomes Evie and the Villain trying to figure out who's betraying him and wreaking havoc at Mayhem Manor (or whatever the actual name for his place is; it's something like that).

The book took a while to get going, but once we got more into the plot about the spy and things happening there, it picked up and I got invested. I enjoyed the various people who worked for the Villain and the details of their jobs and what working for a fantasy villain entails.

However. Evie is clearly meant to be endearing, but it's in that "Blurts out inappropriate things and then babbles" way; when she's not doing that, she's fine, in a too-perfect way. I really just needed the book to cut, like, 80% of Evie and the Villain thinking about each other and how much they like each other and "Stop thinking about your boss that way, Evie!" internal thoughts, etc., etc. The Villain himself was pretty interesting, but his backstory...just did NOT work for me. Or, at least, the details of it didn't; its general arc made sense.

The actual plot itself is pretty good, but the book just took too long to get going and honestly, the writing isn't great. I'll still read at least the next book in the series--this one ends in a cliffhanger--and I'll see how I feel after that.

Hallmark Movie Roundup: Twelve Dates 'Til Christmas

Title: Twelve Dates 'Til Christmas (2025)

Actor(s) You Know:
Mae Whitman (Parenthood, Arrested Development, Independence Day), Jane Seymour (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman;  The Scarlet Pimpernel)

Plot:
Kate is an American who lives in a cute English village and was traumatized by her mother leaving her father when she was a teenager. She works in textiles in London and is single enough that her friends sign her up for a "12 Dates of Christmas" service. Based on a Jenny Bayliss book that I read a few years ago, enjoyed, and remembered little of except who Kate winds up with.

Trope(s):
    Royalty
    Alternate reality
    Small town ✔
    Fake relationship
    Family business getting sold/going bankrupt
    Enemies-to-lovers
    Best friends-to-lovers ✔
    Second chance ✔
    Stranded ✔

Meet Cute: 
Kate has a few in the series, but the primary one is with Richard, who was supposed to be Date #1 but couldn't make it. The other primary love interest is Callum, one of Kate's best friends. They kissed once as teenagers, but nothing came of it.

Rundown:
    Dead parents
    Montage(s)
    Christmas-related name(s) 
    Animals
    Returns to hometown
    Is Santa a character? 
        Secretly or overtly?
    Cookie baking 
    Tree decorating
    Somebody hates Christmas
    Christmas festival in a small town 
    A literal competition
    Child plays matchmaker
    All work, no romance/life
    Kiss before the end of the movie ✔
    Interrupted kiss ✔
    Flashback to childhood ✔
    The leads literally run into each other
    Gratuitous shirtless scene
    Big Secret
    Wacky misunderstanding
    Just. Talk. To. Each. Other. ✔
    Someone pushing the leads together ✔
    Real family = chaos / bad families = cold and not chaotic
    Learns the meaning of Christmas
    Stranded by snowstorm
    Hot chocolate 
    Ice skating
    D-list celebrity ✔
    Enemy-to-friend storyline
    The love interest is an ex
    Career change
    Lying to each other
    Tries to apologize, but keeps getting cut off
    Christmas pageant 
    End with a flash-forward

Did I actually like/root for the heroine? How do the lead(s) annoy me?
Kate was frustratingly believable. She has a hard time trusting people after her mother left her father. At times I got annoyed with her for her self-involvement but I generally understood where she was coming from. She ultimately was a lot more understanding toward her mother than I probably would've been in her situation.

Is it in any way not completely generic? 
Well, it is a (limited) series, so there was a lot more depth than what we get in a normal movie. Kate's father's relationship with Jane Seymour was also given a lot of space, and there was also a decent amount about Kate's career that I don't remember being in the book at all. Callum also has a bit of an arc with his pub/restaurant/bakery, as does other best friend Laura.

It still ends up exactly as you'd expect, though. 

Is the BFF actually the best? Do they need their own movie?
I loved how supportive Laura's husband was; their relationship was super cute. I actually totally would watch a movie/show about Laura after the end of this show.

How is the romantic alternative wrong for the heroine? 
I really liked that I found Richard to be a solid option for Kate for the vast majority of the series; I was actually a bit annoyed at his portrayal in the last episode because it didn't match up for me with his actions in the rest of the series. And I wish the Kate/Callum relationship was handled differently. I'm always a sucker for best-friend-turned-lover, and God knows I have my own issues with thinking people should be able to read my mind and act accordingly, but Callum's attitude and behavior was pretty off-putting. I was honestly rooting for Richard for most of the series, and wish the last episode had been rewritten to strengthen the reconciliation of Kate and Callum.

Thoughts/Other Notes:
I quite enjoyed this. I liked the book, and I liked the series. Opinion on Hallmark Movie Reddit seems mixed, largely because it doesn't entirely feel like a Hallmark production. It was a good binge watch for the end of the year for me. 

I do also kind of wish they had spent more time in Blexford. In the book, Kate only goes to London occasionally, where the series is very much split between the two (to the point that I joked to my husband that the series was produced by British Transport, given the amount of time spent on trains). And I also appreciated, as in the book, the variety of dates the service sets up.  

Rating:
🧀🧀🧀🧀

Another in the "Don't Read While Hungry" series: Trigger warning for rugelach

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I quite enjoyed The Matzah Ball, by Jean Meltzer. Rachel is the daughter of a prominent rabbi and a doctor, has myalgic encephalomyelitis (a.k.a. chronic fatigue syndrome), and is in love with Christmas--to the extent that she makes her living as a Christmas romance novelist. She's told she needs to write a Hanukkah book, though, so she determines that she needs to attend the Matzah Ball, a party being thrown on the eighth night of Hanukkah by Jacob, who was her camp boyfriend when they were 10 years old.

Having read a bunch of holiday-themed rom coms lately, I particularly appreciated that both Rachel and Jacob are flawed. (And I really appreciated that the book does include both POVs.) A misunderstanding at camp affected both of them, but it's not like they've spent the last 20 years pining for the other. Jacob has issues from his upbringing and Rachel is pretty self-absorbed. The two of them together were good, though.

I also enjoyed getting a look at the life of more observant Jews; the description of the Shabbat where Jacob visits Rachel's parents, particularly, was illuminating. It brought me back to 2002, when I wound up booking a hotel in a quite Jewish neighborhood, staying on a Saturday night. (There was...not much available. Also, the elevators stopped on every floor!) I also found the discussion of Hanukkah interesting--how it is a minor holiday, but the characters brought their own depths and perceptions to it. And characters run the gamut from very observant to less; it all felt very inclusive and realistic.

A big highlight for me was Jacob's journey and him coming to terms with his past and family issues. He's truly more than just the love interest in the book; he has his own arc and adorable, supportive bubbe.

Recommend for a good late-year read. 

Yes, my friends and I have Hallmark bingo cards. And ours are correct.

⭐⭐⭐ 

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.)