In a Holidaze is my very first Christina Lauren book. While I know their books are wildly popular, I’m not a huge romance fan and had yet to dive into any of them. When Jordan and I decided that we wanted to read something ‘fun’ and ‘Christmasy’ for our December Let’s Read Rant and Repeat bookclub, we knew this would fit the ticket. And boy were we right!
We begin our story on the last day of the Mae’s annual family Christmas holiday. The Jones family is in mourning for the cabin that has hosted them for over twenty years, distracted by their sorrow, they end up in a car crash. The crash is no simple crash though, and Mae ends up back on a flight bound for Utah and the Cabin. She’s about to be given the utlimate chance to save the cabin and save her family’s holiday tradition. The catch is that the universe wants her to do it right, and whenever she strays too far from her intended path, she has to start all over!
Groundhog’s Day meets Christmas in this fun book. I was not sure how much I was going to like the repeated days, but I felt that it was written very well. They did the perfect mixture of time travel and incorporated it in a slightly different way than the movie. Instead of repeating one day, Mae is repeating an entire week, which was fun to read.
I really like the character of Mae. She’s stuck doing a job she doesn’t love, living at home, and tired of holding back her feelings for her longtime crush, Andrew. While she’s initially freaked out about the whole, repeating day thing, she ultimately decides that she’s going to search for happiness. This isn’t your typical ‘finding’ yourself story, but I enjoyed the way Mae took control of her life, and that happiness and maintaining traditions was really her biggest concerns.
There is plenty of humor mixed into this story and just a little bit of steam to entertain. As a major Christmas fan, this is honestly the perfect holiday read. It’s quick, cute, and wholly heartwarming. It also really highlights that ‘it’s okay to be messy’ and not be totally put together all the time. I will most certainly be diving into more CL books in the future!
This book is out now and it would make the perfect stocking stuffer for the Hallmark movie fan in your life. Get it HERE!
