A Christmas Affair
By Jodi Thomas
Publisher: Harlequin / HQN
Release Date: October 1, 2017
Reviewed by Janga
Wes Whitman is no one’s idea of a knight on a white
horse. He is a grocer who likes his quiet, orderly life and takes pride in the
store he owns. He has no illusions about himself. At thirty-four, he
“considered himself passable” but recognizes that in a few more years he will
likely “get that buzzard look his father and grandfather had aged into. Too
tall, too thin, hawk-nosed and big-eared.” For more than four years, Wednesdays
have been the highlight of Wes’s week. Wednesday is that day that Maria Davis
restocks Davis Jams and Jellies. Over the years, he and Maria have established
their own ritual for these days. He watches her work, escorts her to his office
where she sits in the same chair while they exchange a few sentences, then he
writes her check and follows her to Dakota’s old pickup. One day, Wes changes
the ritual by inviting Maria to have a cup of coffee, but Maria changes things
more radically when she kisses him. Maria wants a “wild affair,” but Wes wants
forever. Can he convince her that his dream is really her dream too?
Meanwhile, three weeks before Christmas, there is a
newcomer in town. Travis Fuller, not quite sixteen and harboring a secret dream
of becoming an architect, has been placed in the custody of his three
great-uncles—Cap, Dice, and Horace Fuller. Travis is convinced they are all
crazy, old men, but with all their idiosyncrasies, they offer him more than his
parents: “His mother was mean and his father was stupid. Their last fight ended
with her in the hospital and him in jail.”
Travis has lost faith in adults. He arrives thinking only of getting
enough money together to buy a bus ticket to somewhere else, but he may just
find that his uncles can give him a home and a future.
Jodi Thomas takes her readers back to Crossroads,
Texas, for a Christmas visit in this heartwarming novella that is part of her
Ransom Canyon series. The story gives readers the quirky town and misfit
characters which have earned her countless fans, and she adds a subtle,
Christmas touch by showcasing characters who find there is indeed room for them
in Crossroads and in the hearts of people who love them.
One of the things that keeps me coming back for more
of Thomas’s work is that in her fictional world, everyone deserves—and
gets—love and the promise of happiness. You would be hard pushed to find a hero
more antithetical to the ever-popular alpha hero than a “passable,” headed-toward-homely merchant who is the shyest person in town. And even Dakota, who
loves her sister devotedly, never imagines that shy, pretty, blind Maria dreams
of romance and a lover who will erase painful memories. Thomas reveals the
romantic hearts Wes and Maria hide. By the time Wes admits to Maria, “I was
about to give up on finding you. . . If whatever this is lasts a day or a
lifetime, it’ll still be the peak in my life,” he has won the reader’s heart as
surely as he wins Maria’s. And Maria is no less successful in tugging at heart
strings when she tells him, “I’d like a Christmas Eve memory that would erase
the night of the wreck. I’d like to dance with the smell of Evergreens around
me and know that for just one moment I’m cherished.” Sigh!
Thomas weaves Travis’s story into the larger story.
His edges may be rougher, but he is no less deserving of a family who cares for
him and a place to belong than Wes and Maria are of romantic love. And the
happy resolution to his story is no less satisfying. Thomas has a gift for
creating lost, searching teens. Travis is the second one in this series. I’d like to think readers will see more of
him, but this may be the conclusion to the Ransom Canyon series. Thomas’s
spring book, Home by Twilight, sounds
like women’s fiction and appears to be a standalone.
If you read Indigo Lake and wished for Maria and Wes’s
story, A Christmas Affair is perfect
wish fulfilment. If you like Christmas romances but want something a bit
different from the usual, A Christmas
Affair may be just what you ordered. If you are a bit weary of stories
about beautiful people and the love affairs of billionaires, you may fall in
love with these blessedly ordinary, richly human characters. Jodi Thomas’s
Christmas gift to her readers is a small gem. I highly recommend it.
