Review & Giveaway - - The Holiday Honeymoon Switch

The Holiday Honeymoon Switch

by Julia McKay

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Release Date: October 8, 2024

Reviewed by Nancy

Holly Beech and Ivy Casey are bury-the-body besties. They’re so in sync, they even look alike. When Holly’s fiancé jilts her, leaving her in shock and with a nonrefundable honeymoon, Holly convinces Ivy to switch places. Ivy will go on the Hawaiian honeymoon her best friend can’t bear to take alone, while Holly escapes to Ivy’s rented Hudson Valley cabin to binge-watch holiday movies and heal.

But Holly’s wallowing is interrupted when her rugged Airbnb host turns out to be her high school academic rival who’s had a major glow-up. Meanwhile, Ivy’s (now Hawaiian) annual solo art retreat is upended when Holly’s ex-fiancé checks into the honeymoon suite—with a new woman. Raging and bed-less, the last thing Ivy expects is for the hot hotel bartender to come to her rescue. Against all odds, this Christmas might prove the most magical yet.

Nancy says: 

The Holiday Honeymoon Switch isn’t only a dual romance. It’s also an ode to friendship and a story about two women breaking out of their longtime patterns to become who they’re meant to be. Even though it’s written in present tense, which I prefer to avoid, I enjoyed it a lot.

Holly is a lawyer in a high-powered firm. She and Matt, her fiancé, have dated since college and drifted toward marriage. She has convinced herself that they’re in love. Deep down, though, she isn’t sure, and as the numbness of being jilted wears off, she begins to see her choices and herself in new ways.

Ivy is a gifted artist. Her work has hung in galleries, but she wanted more security than she believed her art could supply. And living in New York City, which she loves, is expensive. So she took a job as a brand manager at a PR firm to support herself and to stay in the city. Every year, she takes a two-week vacation around Christmas at some place that offers beautiful,

inspiring scenery she can enjoy drawing. Her first trip to Hawaii inspires her, and the people she meets cause her to wonder whether she should, after all, treat her art as a vocation rather than an indulgence.

The book opens with a prologue showing how the two women met and instantly became friends. Then it shifts to the night before Holly’s wedding. Ivy has misgivings but swallows them, as many of us have done with friends’ romances. Unfortunately, her misgivings bear fruit that spurs them to swap Holly’s honeymoon for Ivy’s annual art vacation. The stories diverge from there. 

Dual romances in a single book aren’t unusual, but this one is different in a fun way. As the blurb indicates, the two romances take place in very different, widely separated locations. Only Holly’s and Ivy’s texts to each other tie the two together until the end, when they’re both back in New York.

What makes this bifurcated story so much fun is that both the Hudson Valley town of Krimbo, New York, and the Hawaiian island of Kauai are beautifully depicted. There’s enough detail to make them feel real without being overwhelming or slowing the pace. Both places have wonderful and distinct holiday traditions.

Krimbo is a small town with endearing residents, some of them cheerfully eccentric, and a deep sense of community spirit. Its Christmas traditions and snowy weather help draw Holly and Aiden together. All isn’t jolly, though, because Holly grapples with the sudden onset of intense feelings for Aiden even though she was to be married to someone else about a week earlier. She also faces distrust and hostility from an important member of his family.

Kauai offers a sharp contrast. Instead of evergreens, a Christmas tree farm, and snow in a small town, it gives us sunshine, a gorgeous rainforest, and lots of beautiful beaches. Exploring the island together creates a bond between Ivy and Oliver, the hot bartender. The attraction between them deepens because he also is an artist, a commercially successful nature photographer. What she sees as his nomadic lifestyle reminds her of her often-absent parents, and she takes it as a sign they could never work as a couple because she likes being settled in New York. Meanwhile, she creates beautiful landscapes that Oliver and his friend Larry (a nickname for Larissa) encourage her to see as valuable, not just a holiday indulgence.

The blotch on this Hawaiian paradise is the presence of Holly’s ex, Matt, and his new girlfriend, Abby. There’s just enough of them to remind a reader why this holiday switch occurred. Ivy and Oliver keep running into them. When she finally confronts them, the encounter doesn’t go as she expects.

Ivy’s dealings with Matt and Abby didn’t entirely satisfy me. First, he said he was on his honeymoon, but there was no indication he and Abby had actually gotten married. If they had, they would’ve done so very quickly since they apparently left New York the morning after he broke up with Holly, on what should’ve been his wedding day. After he said he didn’t know where his relationship with Abby was going. He uses the word honeymoon more than once, and Ivy never calls him on it. Second, she never points out that his using the planned honeymoon is doubly low because Holly’s parents paid for it. I wanted her to smack him with both of those points, and she never does.

My other problem with the book is that it feels stretched. The type is largish and looks like it’s space-and-a-half between lines. This makes the paperback look longer than it actually is. I wouldn’t let that stop me from buying the book, and it doesn’t stop me from recommending it. I do find it annoying, though, to have a $19.00 paperback feel like a short novel. It seems overpriced for the amount of story it delivers. If I were buying this, I would buy the ebook at $12.99 instead of the print. 

Overall, despite my issue with Matt and Abby, The Holiday Honeymoon Switch is a fun, endearing holiday romance. The heroines are likeable, with a friendship anyone would be lucky to have. The two women have more baggage than their charming heroes. This works because their internal conflicts are depicted in believable, sympathetic ways and work to cause hesitation about seizing the chance to see where their romantic attractions could go. The supporting characters are varied and interesting without drawing the spotlight away from either couple. The roles they play in the two romances make sense.

I highly recommend the ebook version of this novel.

4 stars

~Nancy

Readers, have you read any books by Julia McKay?

Do you enjoy switching places books or movies? Do you have any favorites you would recommend?

One person who posts a comment before 11:00 PM, October 13 will receive a print copy of The Holiday Honeymoon Switch.

*U.S. only

*Must be 18