Linda Rettstatt, $1.99, ISBN 978-0463845189
Contemporary Romance, 2019
Linda Rettstatt’s Falling for Mr. Christmas starts out like way too many small town contemporary romances: reiterating that women are terrible drivers and should never be allowed to travel long distance without supervision.
Cassidy Milford left her phone charger back in Baltimore, so she has no way of actually calling for help when she gets lost while trying to get to Falls Village. Oh look, here’s a blizzard. Fortunately, she will live to see Christmas because our hero Blake Hargrove is around to help. Thank heavens for men—how will the helpless, weaker, dimmer sex ever survive the first hour of the day without their presence, wisdom, and penis?
Our heroine continues to daintily dab at her eyes and sobs as her “a woman outside of a home is a 50-car pile-up waiting to happen” problems continue to bloat, but luckily for her, she only has to sit there and sob while Blake helps her out.
The author doesn’t even let Cassidy be proactive in grabbing romance by the dong. No, she doesn’t believe in love, oh no, and it is the villagers here that urge her to mount that man and let him do all the thinking for her, so that she will never leave the house and endanger everyone else around her ever again. On the other hand, Blake is the quintessential reliable man that is clearly a good daddy material, as proven by the lengths he will go for his sister’s brat, and stable surrogate brainpower for inferior lady brains everywhere. He’s a catch, and Cassidy can’t even do one thing on her own and reach out to cop a feel. Ugh.
Having said that, this is actually an easily digestible read. The narrative is clean, and there are some nice romantic moments here, especially that last few sentences of the story. Those sentences actually make me go “Aww, that’s so sweet!” despite my feelings about everything else about the story up to that point.
Hence, I can’t say that this is a bad story in any way, especially not from a technical standpoint. I can say, though, that this is a story that is very reliant on secondary characters really, really pushing main characters to be together, a heroine that is too much of a damsel in distress, and a hero whose role often feels more like a babysitter and emotional tampon than an equal partner to the heroine.
So, if you like these things in your written equivalent of a Hallmark movie, it’s only $1.99. If you prefer something else, there are many other titles out there that you can throw your money to!
