Sunday Book Club: Holiday Books that Aren’t About Christmas

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Real moment here, this post was requested almost over a year ago, and I’ve been avoiding writing it. The topic scared me! Holiday books that aren’t about Christmas? What the heck? What do I even mean by that? It’s a topic I invented and I didn’t even know where to start. So I put off writing about the topic, but then the topic was requested again. I knew if I avoided it again this year, the topic would just even up again on my list next year, so I had to stop putting it off. I gave up and dove into the topic wholeheartedly. And actually, it turned out to be a really good thing that I put off the post one year. Why? Well, some really good books that fell into this category came out this year!

I will note, I’m not done with all of them, but I’ve pretty thoroughly enjoyed all of the ones I have.

Holiday Books that Aren’t All About Christmas

The Afterlife of Holly Chase Paperback by Cynthia Hand

We all know the basic Scrooge story: someone is the worst, three ghosts visit them, and then boom, they wake up reformed! Well, what happens if someone wakes up and doesn’t change? That’s what happened to Holly Chase. Holly laughed off the whole thing, continued to be a terrible person and ended up dying a few days later. Now, before she can “move on” she has to participate in Operation Scrooge. For the last five years, Holly has been working as the first ghost, helping to reform wayward Scrooges.

I loved that this book was a much more interesting take on the basic Scrooge story. I really didn’t know if I could handle reading a Dickens style story, but this was the compete opposite.

The Usual Santas: A Collection of Soho Crime Christmas Capers by Peter Lovesey

I’m only a few stories into this collection, but it’s so much fun! The title is pretty self explanatory and I would say that so far the stories are equal parts heart warming and shocking. I would not suggest reading these to children though. At all.

Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe by Melissa de la Cruz

What’s the holidays without another Pride and Prejudice remake? But this time, Darcy is a woman, Elizabeth is actually a man named Luke, Bingley is a gay man who falls in love with Jim, Luke’s older gay brother. Also, Charlotte and Collins are smushed into one character named Charlotte Collins. Are you still with me?

Darcy is a high power NYC executive who was excommunicated from her family 10 years ago, but she rushes home during Christmas when her mom has a heart attack. The rest of the plot of Pride and Prejudice then ensues.

Either way, it was absolutely delightful and when I was done reading it, I went oh man, this should totally be a Hallmark movie. Then I googled it and discovered that they JUST made it into a Hallmark holiday movie this year. Double win.

Alaskan Holiday: A Novel by Debbie Macomber

I’m about 50 pages into this novel so far and I’m currently undecided. However, the Goodreads community seems to currently love it. The main gist is that Josie is a chef who just spent the last 6 months in a small town in super northern Alaska. When she’s supposed to leave to go back to Seattle for a full time, she accidentally misses the last ferry out. This is a huge deal because in remote Alaskan towns like this, once winter hits, there aren’t that many ways in or out.

For Josie, this is terrible. For Palmer, the man in love with her, this is just the last chance he needs.

Update: the rest of the book is incredibly cheesy, but it flies by quickly. It’s an okay afternoon read if you need an escape.

Winter in Paradise by Elin Hilderbrand

I don’t know why it took me until this year to get into Hilderbrand, but now that I’ve started, I love her! Winter in Paradise takes place right after Christmas, but I think that still counts as holiday focused. (Check out my other review here!)

This was one of those books where I originally thought I was going to be frustrated with all of the characters in the book, but I slowly came to care about all of them. I wanted to see each of them succeed and I felt bad about each set back they faced. The plot isn’t difficult, but there are a few sides to it, so I’d suggest reading through it on Amazon/Barnes and Noble/etc. But it was a great read regardless.

One Day in December by Josie Silver

One Day in December seems to be the breakout hit on Book of the Month this month! (If you want to read it for free, you can use my link here to get your first book free!) The main plot of this book is that during the holidays one year, a woman on the bus locks eyes with the man at the bus stop for a fairly intense minute. She isn’t able to get off the bus to meet him, but she tells her friend about him. They then jokingly spend the rest of the year trying to find him. She finally finds him the next year though: he’s the mystery man her best friend has been seeing for the past few weeks.

Over the course of the book we check in with them every few years, but around the holidays every year.

I had very mixed feelings about the plot. I loved the main character and the plot of the book, but I truthfully did not like the male. He frustrated me endlessly and almost made me give up on the book a few times. I’m glad I didn’t, but man he made me angry. I would say to still read the book, maybe he won’t annoy you as much as he annoyed me.

Christmas in London by Anita Hughes

How come we have beach reads but we don’t have winter holiday reads? If we did, this book would fall firmly into this category. Christmas in London is 100% one of those books you can read when you want to just turn off your brain and have fun. It’s cute and frivolous. What’s also funny is that the character who I thought were supposed to be the main character is far more one dimensional than the second lead, Kate. Kate seems to be the most well rounded, developed character in the book. I was far more interested in her story, so I was glad to see that we got just as much, if not more of her story.

It also made me super excited to visit London in just a few weeks and see it all decorated for Christmas!

The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman

This novella is a quick read, but also a touching one. If you’ve ever read Backman’s work, you know that it’s absolutely beautiful, and this novella is no exception. I can’t really describe it without giving it away, but just know that you’ll want to have some tissues near by.

Do you have any great holiday books that I should pick up? Share them in the comments below!