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Début author Eve Morton’s Holidays in Blue is billed by Carina Press as a “forced proximity Christmas romance” and the blurb goes on to say how the two principal characters find themselves stranded together for Christmas. Some of my favourite seasonal romances use that particular trope, so I decided to pick up this book for review, expecting a lot of snow, a bit of awkwardness and flirting, plenty of sexual tension and a Christmassy atmosphere… and this book contains exactly NONE of those things. Okay, so it’s an ice storm rather than snow that strands the guys together, but when a book is billed as a “Christmas romance” I think it’s reasonable to expect it to have a) a Christmas feel to it and b) some romance in it – no?
Cosmin Tessler and Eric Campbell lived across the street from each other maybe twenty years before but never really knew each other that well, because Cosmin is around a decade older and moved away while Eric was still in school. But the age gap didn’t stop Eric from developing a crush on Cosmin, and it was thanks to watching Cosmin and his boyfriend making out one night (in the front seat of the bf’s car) that kind of cemented his suspicions that he wasn’t completely straight.
Eric became an actor and for a while starred in a (not-very-good) TV show, but seems now to spend most of his time failing auditions and narrating audiobooks, while Cosmin went on to become a teacher, writer, and radio personality.
The pair meet again – very briefly – when Eric is tending bar at the radio station’s Christmas party. Cosmin has just received the news that his contract is not being renewed so he goes to the bar for a drink. He’s been thinking all night that Eric looked familiar but wasn’t able to place him; Eric re-introduces himself, but Cosmin is quite rude to him and leaves.
They don’t see each other again until around a quarter of the way into the book, after Cosmin returns to his family home intending to sort through his recently deceased father’s possessions (and to look for the papers relating to his adoption) and Eric goes home for Christmas a few days early (his family is away visiting his sister, but will be back by Christmas Eve). Hearing the news of a coming ice storm on the radio, Eric, who doesn’t realise George Tessler has died, decides to go over there to check the old man is okay, and is pleasantly surprised to be greeted by Cosmin instead. The ice storm sets in quickly after that, and strands them together for a couple of nights.
That’s the set up, but what follows is far more the story of one man coming to terms with his father’s death and the other working through his feelings over his failed marriage than it is a romance. The author has some interesting things to say about grief and loss and moving on, but it’s very… cerebral (which does fit with Cosmin’s character), and while I did enjoy Cosmin’s journey as he comes to learn and understand his father more than he had done in life, it does give the story a more melancholy feel than I expected.
Cosmin’s story is the dominant one and we get a lot more insight into his situation than into Eric’s, but he has a journey to make, too. In his case, it’s learning to forgive himself for some of the things he did which led to the breakdown of his marriage, and to stop seeing himself in terms of failure.
Holidays in Blue does have some things going for it – the writing is generally good and sometimes lyrical (although some of the sex scenes felt as though the author wasn’t comfortable writing them), but the pacing is off; sometimes things move really slowly, and at others, they go from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. An example – Cosmin and Eric don’t really interact until the twenty-three percent mark; at thirty-three, they’re making out and talking about fucking. If I’d had a print book, I think I’d have been flipping through the pages looking for the missing chapters!
The biggest problem with it, however, is that the romance is a complete non-starter. There’s no chemistry between Cosmin and Eric, no real connection and very little by way of romantic development. At a rough estimate, they spend about half the book apart (possibly a bit more) and I didn’t feel I got to know either of them outside of Cosmin’s grief and Eric’s self-recrimination – and I didn’t feel they got to know each other outside of that either. Plus, they’re not “stranded, alone, for Christmas”. They spend two days and nights together (before Christmas) and then go their separate ways until the reunite in the penultimate chapter.
Ultimately, the book tries to be too many things and loses sight of the one thing that should have been front and centre. There’s a sub-plot concerning a friend of Cosmin’s whose daughter has an eating disorder and who has to be admitted to hospital, and another about Eric and an unexpected windfall (and the way he spends the money he inherited made no sense to me whatsoever). The book addresses a lot of important issues – grief, adoption, infidelity (there’s no cheating in the story) unemployment, anorexia, to name a few, but it’s too much for a book of just over two hundred pages, and it’s the romance that suffers and is squeezed out.
When it comes down to it, this isn’t a romance novel; it’s a story of self-discovery and learning to move on after loss that happens to have a romantic sub-plot. (And not a very good one at that). Needless to say, I can’t recommend it.
Buy it at: Amazon
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Grade: C
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 25/12/20
Publication Date: 12/2020
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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How disappointing! The book sounded promising, which is why I requested my library make an e-book purchase. Now, I won’t feel so bad if they decide not to pick it up. Thanks for the review, Caz. I was really looking forward to reading your thoughts on this title.
“The book addresses a lot of important issues – grief, adoption, infidelity (there’s no cheating in the story) unemployment, anorexia, to name a few, but it’s too much for a book of just over two hundred pages, and it’s the romance that suffers and is squeezed out.”
In the past, romance publishers were pretty good about reining in a pile of subplots and problems to focus on the two leads falling in love. I know that’s why a friend of a friend (a friend-in-law?) had much better luck with women’s fiction than category romance. She kept getting rejected by Harlequin back in the day because of all this issue-stuffing and excessive secondary character development. Of course, I’m happy for her, but having read some of her books, I can see why they wouldn’t have worked for Harlequin. She is, I’m sorry to say, one of those authors who admittedly puts the issues before the characters, and it shows. It sounds like Eve Morton has fallen into the same trap. Hey, I’m sure many of us writers have been there, but I think publishers have gotten a little sloppier about enforcing good pacing or preventing their writers from throwing in everything including the kitchen sink.
I admit to wondering where the editor was. I mean, didn’t the book go through a developmental edit, and if so, why didn’t the editor remark on the lack of romance?
The blurb is misleading, which does nobody any favours.
“Why didn’t the editor remark on the lack of romance?”
I wonder if it has anything to do with this Carina Press wish list blog post I found on Write for Harlequin the other day: Editor Wishlist: What the Carina Press Editors Want – Write for Harlequin.
What I found particularly interesting was one of the editor’s requests for “women’s fiction crossover.” Obviously, an m/m story wouldn’t be in this category, but the way Holidays in Blue is written follows more of a women’s fiction meandering pattern according to your review. It sounds like Carina Press is getting more open to looser genre definitions even though they are strict about the HEA/HFN. According to one editor:
I’ve always been a fan of Carina Press’s willingness to mix and match genres, but it sounds like they might be getting a little too loose with their product line. I.e. I think they’re starting to lose their way.
As for wondering where the editor was, I originally thought that about The Vicar and the Rake. But then I realized something: the weak, whirlwind development of the relationship and paint-by-numbers sex scenes did their job to reach their typical m/m fanbase. Sadly, I think the “ideological cheeseburger” theory about literature posited by Ellen Finnegan holds true. There are plenty of discerning readers out there, but there are enough easily-satisfied readers who gobble up worn out tropes like junk food to keep these publishers in business. Appealing to the AAR crowd might make for more complex stories, but that would entail making risks that could hurt the bottom line.
I’m definitely not trying to insult anybody’s reading choices. But let’s just say, if Fifty Shades of Grey was gender swapped to Fifty Shades of Steele with Anastasia as a billionaire dominatrix and Grey as a gawky young, sexually inexperienced journalist, there’d be a market for it, but the product would remain niche rather than a cultural phenomenon. Likewise, I think there’s a demand for stuffing as many tragic issues and backstories into a single story. Unfortunately, high sales from churning out the same disappointing, mediocre fare just encourages more of the same.
That is all very true. I’m a big fan of Carina Press and hope they continue to put out strong romances. But that wish list and the statement that a romance doesn’t have to be front and centre shows, IMO, a fundamental misunderstanding of romance reader expectations. If they want to branch out like that, fine. But market those products as romances, and they’ll have some unhappy readers.
I agree. If Carina Press wants to pursue more literary small-r romances, it would be beneficial to create a separate category for them. Maybe they could invent a new (sub)genre like “literary romance” (HEA/HFN guaranteed!) or something?
They could do that. Or they could just try not to describe a book as something it isn’t in the blurb.
O/T – we ‘spoke’ a while back about The Vicar and the Rake – I can’t remember which threads that was on, so I’m putting this here – https://www.audiogals.net/2020/12/the-vicar-and-the-rake-by-annabelle-greene/