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Second Chance Romance full of Holiday Sweetness!
Maybe This Christmas
Holiday Fiction
Haver Street Press
October 22, 2019
ebook
113
Two best friends. Ten Christmases. One happy ending.
When best friends Alexandra and Lucas share a first kiss on Christmas night their senior year of high school, it feels like the best years of their lives are ahead of them.
Then Alex goes off to college, and Lucas stays behind to work at his dad’s construction business in the small beach town where they grew up. Life, as they say, happens. And somewhere along the way these two high school sweethearts find they don’t have as much in common as they once did.
Lucas’s life is on Beaufort Island, and Alex is all about getting away and moving on. So he makes one of the hardest decisions of his life and lets her go.
But every year when Alex comes home for the holidays, fate conspires to reunite the two former lovebirds on Christmas Day. Year after year, through good times and bad, Lucas and Alex meet up, catch up, and reconnect on the anniversary of their first kiss.
Is it too much to hope that one year they’ll find their way back to each other permanently?
Maybe even this Christmas.
“He was her anchor. The one thing in her world that always made sense. Her best friend.”
If you need a holiday novella that’s better than a cable channel movie, Maybe This Christmas by Susannah Nix is the one to read.
I’m a year late to the party on this one, but don’t make my mistake and hold off on reading this! Maybe This Christmas is told over the course of 10 years, where each chapter is a snapshot of the lives of Alexandra and Lucas. Both shy friends, Alex and Lucas navigate their budding love starting in their senior year of high school all the way throughout most of their twenties.
Seems straightforward, right? You would be wrong. Maybe This Christmas isn’t all marshmallow fluff and gooey instalove. There is some spice with this Christmas cookie. I truly admire the way Susannah Nix has woven some realistic drama in with her romance between Alex and Lucas. Finding out that one of the characters is exploring their sexuality (I won’t say who) was honestly refreshing, and I think an accurate portrayal of most college-age young adults. Additionally, having to make hard choices to help out family rather than pursue your personal wants and dreams is hard on anyone fictional character or not. On top of all of that, having to navigate family angst and drama is another obstacle of many friendships and relationships.
I love that this novella is more about learning to love in light of all these different changes. Instead of giving up on someone you love, learning to embrace the emotional growth that both people have made is a lesson that is often overlooked in light of more established romance tropes. Alex and Lucas are two characters that will have you rooting for them, and simultaneously want to give a hug. These characters are real, flawed, and yet so charming that I wished the novella was longer, but the ending was resolved in a great way.
Maybe This Christmas is a novella that I will for sure be reading every holiday season, and I will definitely be reading more of Susannah Nix’s books in the future.
Jes is a self-proclaimed bookworm, who recently moved from the PNW back to the Midwest. When her nose isn’t in a book, she’s spending time with her husband, two kids, and her three fur babies, or exploring the globe. She also firmly believes that you should start the day with coffee, and end the day in bed with a good book.
