Always, in December by Emily Stone

 

Always, in December by Emily Stone

Reviewed by Kristin

This review contains spoilers.

I rarely review books that I do not like. However, sometimes they are so bad that they need a review, or maybe a big warning sign. Beware, all ye who enter here, or something along those lines.

Josie is a young 30-ish Londoner whose boyfriend Oliver made the decision just days before Christmas to cheat on her with one of their officemates. Yeah, the Christmas Eve office party is going to be a blast this year.

Josie lost her parents on Christmas Eve when she was aged nine. Her paternal grandparents Memo (pronounced Mee-Mo) and Grandad raised her lovingly. But since Josie has been an adult, she always finds ways to avoid being with her family over Christmas in an attempt to remove herself from the sadness which surrounds her holidays. FaceTime, yes. In person, no.

Best friend and roommate Bia is off to Argentina for the holidays, and Oliver’s cheating departure leaves Josie alone. She’s fine with that, until a chance encounter leads her to….

Max.

Josie literally runs into Max on her bicycle as he is departing a taxi. She knocks him down, and awkwardly offers to buy him a drink to make up for the inconvenience she has caused him.

                                                   WARNING

Spoilers may or may not start here. 

So that all sounds like your typical rom-com and maybe even interesting if you’re into that kind of thing, right? Everything above is disclosed in the jacket copy and/or the first couple of chapters. What happens next is an overly stereotypical breakdown of communication.

Josie ends up telling Max way more about her life than she would usually tell a stranger. Max tells her a few things about his job as an architect and his family. He is on the way to New York to visit them but of course a storm over the Atlantic has delayed his flight. (For days? Really?) Josie and Max become just close enough that they feel a spark of something real, and then Max slips out of her apartment leaving only a note. No phone number, no social media contacts, just a “thanks for a few great days” note.

Josie and Max continue to run into each other over the course of the next year or so. New York City, Edinburgh, where else do you bump into brief acquaintances in such big cities except in books? They constantly misunderstand each other—Josie assumes Max is back with his ex-girlfriend Erin. Is he? Isn’t he? Nothing is clear.

I was okay with taking this light romance at face value until it came to the point where a major character has a catastrophic event. Very little foreshadowing, and so abrupt as to make it seem unrealistic. As I was sharing my frustrations over this book with Jeanne, she said it reminded her of the books by Lurlene McDaniel. Those young adult novels seemed to be solely for the purpose of showing how the main character went through heartbreak. Someone always died, or at least as far as both of us remember.

After the catastrophic event, some of the hidden backstory was revealed. But for me, it was a case of too little and too late. Do you disagree? Am I just too cynical? I welcome opposing viewpoints. If you have read Always, in December and loved it, please let me know.