Just Like Magic
Sarah Hogle, 2022
This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics, and I think I read somewhere that this one was loosely inspired by the Grinch, but it's not a super strong connection.
Premise: Bettie had it all. She lost it all. She accidentally summoned a holiday spirit. Now she's got a one-way ticket back to the life she wants, unless she realizes she wants something else instead.
I'll be honest, I almost quit reading this book. I hated Bettie. She was awful. She was useless. She was a self-pitying mess of a person who wasn't ever in any real trouble, despite the terrible decisions she'd made and things she'd done.
She was a mess partly because she'd briefly been a child star, but I didn't have any sympathy, because she was also a washed-up wannabe influencer who was trying to scam her way back into relevance rather than admit to her (extremely wealthy) family she needed help.
There's an argument to be made that this story is loosely inspired by the Grinch. Bettie doesn't hate Christmas specifically, but she does seem to hate everything, she's a truly terrible person, and her heart definitely grows in the end. All that is to say, I know you're supposed to dislike her, but I really, really hated her. I probably would have stopped reading if I didn't want to review the book for this blog.
She even had a marketable skill! Her horrible social media scams were kept afloat by what must have been decent photoshop skills, but the book never says, hey, you could try to learn some basic graphic design and actually work with that. Instead she gets a Hallmark-ready shopgirl job with an opening to start her own artisanal greeting card company in the end.
It's supposed to be a comedy, and parts of it were funny, but the beginning was so hard to get through.
She accidentally summons Hall, a happy, bubbly Holiday Spirit, by spilling wine on a Mariah Carey record and playing it backward. Hall's human form is conveniently a very cute guy. He starts granting her "holiday" wishes, but remember, she's a horrible human being, so she uses this power to cause havoc for people who've slighted her over the years and get over-the-top gifts so she can "win" Christmas at her family's place.
She even ends up rewinding time after her first attempts at making an entrance for the family Christmas party end up backfiring on her (because they are stupid, over-the-top ideas like arriving in a hot-air balloon wearing a diamond-covered dress).
Hall attends the party as her pretend fiancé, and he eventually starts convincing her to make wishes that are more in the spirit of the holidays. He also helps her family come together and be nicer to each other. And she starts falling for him.
And in the end, the book almost won me over. It was sweet and funny, and Bettie and her siblings all relax their poses and come together as a family. Hall and Bettie bond, and she realizes that what she needs isn't money and fame, it's someone who makes her want to be a better person.
I kind of rolled my eyes at exactly how the book decides to make Hall human so they can be together, but I was expecting it. I liked that she had to spend a little time alone first, proving that she could lead a better life even without him. Probably.
In the end it was an enjoyable, silly read, but I'm still a little stuck on the beginning. I'm not sure Bettie atones enough for my taste. The Grinch almost did one very bad thing, and then decided not to. There are real Betties in the world, and they aren't interested in caring about or helping others, and that's why this book still leaves a weird taste in my brain.
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