The Holiday Honeymoon Switch

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas

The Holiday Honeymoon Switch
Julia McKay, 2024

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I got this title too late in the season to cover it last year, but better late than never?

Premise: Besties Holly and Ivy decide to swap their planned holiday getaways after Holly's fiancé breaks off their relationship just before their Christmas wedding. They both find new friends and possible love by taking the road they didn't plan on.

This book is two romances in one, and that fact leads to both the story's flaws and its joys.

The good: two stories means that they switch off, meaning neither one is likely to get boring or overstay its premise. Holly's fiancé (who Ivy has doubted but tried to be cool with for a long time) jilts her for another woman, causing her to be numb and sad for a lot of the beginning of the story. It's good to break this up with Ivy's concern for her friend. Meanwhile, Ivy is unhappy with her career, but unwilling to seek a different path.

The doubled story also means that we see in high relief how each of their backgrounds affects their life. Holly's image-focused parents made her assume that "fine" was the best she was getting out of a partner, so she never questioned just moving up the relationship escalator with her ex. Ivy's hippie parents made her long for stability so strongly that she's discounting her own (considerable) artistic talent to stay in a corporate life, keeping herself sane by "allowing herself" an annual art retreat and downplaying her art the rest of the year. 

The bad: Neither of their love interests gets much in the way of character development. Each is perfect for the role - Aiden was Holly's high-school rival who pushed her to be great (unlike her ex who kept her feeling small) and still thinks she's amazing. (He's also hot, rich, cares about people, the community, and the environment...) Oliver is a funny, hot bartender/globe-trotting photographer who has managed to balance artistic pursuits with a happy life. 

Both stories have a lesbian couple as secondary characters (Aiden's stressed and prickly sister and placid, friendly sister-in-law, Oliver's super-friendly bestie and her often long-distance wife) who round out the cast and dump exposition about the boys on Holly and Ivy. This is mostly fine, also it ends up being potentially confusing given that Shira (part of one couple) isn't heard from or seen until very late in the book, while Sidra is present in the other story, making me have to double check that they weren't the same person. 

The holiday: Holly and Aiden meet and fall in love in a sickeningly Hallmark-perfect Christmas town - the kind that is small enough for everyone to know and care about everyone else but somehow also big enough to host a lengthy, expensive-sounding Christmas parade. Oliver and Ivy are enjoying the opposite trope, a Hawaiian holiday with sun and camping, but they still fit in some holiday events because Oliver loves them. 

I'm snarking about this book lightly because I found it just a little too gossamer, a little too easy and obvious for all the characters. Despite the dramatic heartbreak of the early scenes, everything else ran by-the-numbers. It's another Netflix pitch as a book, and not the kind that is better than average. It's good, but not great.