Review: A White Lie Christmas, Suzy Langevin

Introduction: On the Holiday Hallmark Movie

Two disclaimers: I received this novella as an ARC, requested specifically because I like Suzy, we’re in anthologies together, and I wanted to provide her with a review. Second disclaimer being that I don’t like holiday Hallmark movies.

I know. You’re shocked. What, the girl who writes merc stories, radioactive murders on space cruises, and long weird romances in cyborg loony bins hates Hallmark romances?! Le shock. I can’t write a romance without at least one explosion—it’s just who I am.

So consider this a review of a type of romance (the Hallmark holiday story) from someone who doesn’t generally like this kind of stuff. Suzy’s stated intent in this story is to have a romance between a plus-size FMC and an MMC with depression, which I think is neat because you don’t see either of those very often, let alone both. Her other stated intent is to do a Hallmark movie in reverse, wherein the FMC doesn’t need to give up her ambitions and leave the big city to have love. I will do my best to assess whether the novella pulls off its stated intents, and how well it manages the task. Ostensibly, because I don’t like the standard Hallmark holiday romance and I’m an educated woman who likes the big city, I should be someone in the target audience, right?

But first of all, let’s talk a bit about the holiday romance generally. What is it, and what’s special about it? What does it do, in its ideal platonic form?

We just put out an anthology of holiday romance stories (Midnight, Mischief, and Mistletoe, buynowbeattherush), and I did a last-minute copyedit of the full MS while reading for marketing purposes. I’ve been thoroughly drenched in the category at this point. When I asked my sister Michelle, who is very much our target demo, if she wanted the anthology for Christmas, she responded that she wanted it well ahead of Christmas to get into the holiday mood. So let’s start there: the holiday romance sets the mood for Christmas. The romance in the story, its predictable tropes and story arc and guaranteed happily ever after, sets you up to fall in love with the holidays all over again. The holiday romance tends cozier; the stakes are lower, close to home, orbiting family drama and small domestic miseries, the sorts of things ever on our minds at the holidays. In some ways, the category feels like a kind of inoculation against the Christmas Blues, helping to ward them away before they descend.

Somewhat fittingly, therefore, A White Lie Christmas is all about the Christmas Blues and family miseries. Before I go on, I will say this: the novella does not shy away from that fact, and it handles those blues comparatively well.

Tropes

I know this is important to many people who read romance, so I want to get it out of the way and talk about what tropes the novella uses, as well as how it uses them and what I thought. This will also function as a partial summary of the work. I do not believe a summary counts as a review, and I will only summarize as much as I need to in order to make a point or give my thoughts.

Christmas Grump: A play on the Grumpy/Sunshine trope, Chris (our MMC) is a depressive wreck at the holidays because of the death of his father and ongoing depression issues. He prefers to spend the meat of the holiday alone. By contrast, our FMC loves Christmas. Unlike many Hallmark movie FMCs, however, Juliana does not go Manic Pixie Dream Girl and set out to “fix” Chris or convince him that Christmas is awesome, that he’s wrong, or he’s missing the magic of the season. His reason for feeling miserable—obviously complex grief—is not a thing that the text or Juliana set out to solve. Instead, Juliana validates Chris’s feelings, recognizes his depression, and tries to keep his mind off it instead of thrusting Christmas in his face.

Fake Dating: This is the crux of the whole story, as the white lie here is Juliana telling her family she has a boyfriend and Chris pretending to be that boyfriend. I actually liked it in concept, but found it faltered in execution some, mostly on grounds of pacing and one act of contrivance too many. I think this plot would have been far stronger if Juliana and Chris were at least familiar with each other before the story began—maybe ran in the same circles—and that Chris’s crush was already established. They essentially meet when Chris comes out of the shower and scares Juliana half to death as a strange naked man in her apartment; while funny, it weakened the premise and its execution. The reveal, that he’s deathly allergic to nuts and Juliana didn’t know that, would still be believable if they were merely acquaintances.

Evil Mother and Sister: A spin on the evil Stepmother and Stepsister(s), Juliana’s mother and sister are nightmare entities from the planet NO THANKS. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, as it lends a charming Cinderella flavor to the story, but I generally prefer a little more relatability to figures like this, especially when they’re women. The sister showing some character or sisterly love every once in a while would have gone far; sometimes the worst thing about family is not them intentionally refusing to understand you, but simply being ignorant and disinterested, even when they love you. The mother quite obviously has something going on, like a personality disorder, and I wish this were handled a little more deftly. There are moments when I simply find the mother’s lines unbelievable, and this is coming from someone with a best friend whose mother is a bullying narcissist constantly making comments about my friend's weight. In my experience, such comments are often more subtle and feel just this side of well-intentioned, which is what makes them so maddening.

Meet Cute: The novella has a pretty hilarious meet cute, which you can absolutely feel coming with a mixture of dread and amused anticipation, as two trains of human being cruise along ready to hit each other—in the form of a naked man taking a shower as Juliana comes home unexpectedly to an apartment she expects to be empty. My only criticism here was that Juliana didn’t absolutely rip her friend Caroline a new one for telling Chris he could stay there without getting Juliana’s full, active, and obviously-paying-attention consent. There are moments when Caroline feels like Yang from Grey’s Anatomy, which you can get away with there because it’s a long TV series, and Yang is a broken human being we fully explore; here, it feels like there’s more to the story and we’re just not receiving it.

Rich MMC: When I saw that Chris was rich, I immediately cringed, because I see this often—and I often dislike it. Here, I was pleasantly surprised. Several times, the story could have indulged itself in a certain kind of extreme “rich man spoiling the FMC” wish fulfillment, thereby making me cringe so hard that my grandchildren would feel it. Earlier this year, I read that Cozy Omegaverse story, and one of the things it did was have our FMC wander around a book fair while one of the MMCs followed and bought her every book she showed even a passing interest in. I know this is satisfying for some readers, but I personally despise the materialism and forcefulness of it. There was a moment at a market in A White Lie Christmas when I was worried it would happen, but Chris tastefully doubles back for a single scarf Juliana really likes and gives it to her for Christmas. Very restrained, 10/10, no cringing. Thank you, Suzy.

Book Worm/Romance-Reading FMC: This unfortunately made me cringe a little. I see it a lot; I think it may be overwhelmingly expected in an increasingly self-referential and fan-servicing subgenre like contemporary romance, so it if felt necessary somehow, I could totally see that. I understand the appeal of having an FMC reference the trope she’s using (fake dating) and sort of “writing” her own romance, or at least acknowledging that she’s aware of it. I could imagine the reader who enjoys this kind of self-reference in a genre they read a lot; I personally find myself cringing at it. I would much rather that the story proceeded confidently with its tropes and did not show this kind of self-awareness and winking at the camera, unless it really needs to, or the story is very much about that, or it’s a funny reveal at the end. I did like the book Christmas tree, however, and I think this could have been done with Juliana’s textbooks or novels from some other genre. Another way to soften it would have been to make her favored subgenre or category something super specific or obviously different from the novella we’re reading—so make her extremely interested in Regency romance, or give her nothing but hockey or mafia romance books, etc. That would have traveled back into a funny quirk and felt less self-referential. I think making her big interest knitting would have been better, however. It’s an old Grey’s Anatomy reference, lots of romance readers like it, and it adds depth to her appreciation of the scarf (as a mark of its craftsmanship), making it even more special when Chris gets it for her.

The Reverse/Subverted Hallmark

Doing the subverted Hallmark feels like a dodgy but necessary proposition, and I honor it. People who like these kinds of movies avidly love them, returning year after year to their favorites and eagerly looking for more. Those who dislike them avoid them like the plague if possible. A narrow band exists in the middle, consisting of people in romance world, like me, who would strenuously love to see an upheaval or reversal in the tropes and attitudes of the Hallmark holiday movie.

As with any subversion inside the genre, it has to come from a place of love, and I think Suzy pulls that off here. There’s no sense that she dislikes the Hallmark movie—her novella just suggests another attitude and different assumptions about the world. I liked, for instance, that Chris is depressed and working on it with medication, but not 100% of the way there; he’s on a journey. I like that he’s supportive of Juliana’s intelligence and ambitions, and I like that he defends her to her family. I like that Juliana has to cut things off with her mother for a while at the end, which feels extremely wise when we get there. I liked that Chris moves to Boston instead of trying to take Juliana away from her education, and that he provides a way for her to move in with him with zero pressure and an obvious exit route if she’s not ready. It manages to be a grand gesture without feeling manipulative.

Most of what I find contrived or ungainly in the story come down to unnatural character development and dialogue or pacing issues. If this were a short story, I would blame length, but here, the novella could have stood about two additional chapters in the first third. Most importantly, I found the development of Chris’s crush unnatural and sudden; I think this could have been fixed by him knowing Juliana already and revealing the crush (recommended) or an additional chapter retelling the story of their first dinner from his POV, showing the development of his crush and things he’s noticing about her. While he notes later that his silence and awkwardness were partially down to listening to Juliana, finding her intelligent and beautiful and getting tongue-tied, this is something that should have been shown and not told.

The reveal to Juliana’s family was also minorly flawed by pacing, and it happened about a paragraph or four lines of dialogue quicker than it should have. Rushing a reveal is a common issue and difficult to avoid, but getting it right is vital to ratcheting up the drama of a scene and making its sequels feel satisfying. I also felt that the story faltered a bit at the dark moment. I think this might be down to the generic expectations of the holiday Hallmark story, where the stakes need to remain low, but more tension at this point would have been preferable. These were small flaws in an otherwise enjoyable experience, and in both cases, I think they come down partially to the speed of the story being set to “cozy” when I want something more in the “dramatic.”

Lower Order Concerns

Lower Order Concerns, or LOC, are what many writing teachers call smaller issues, like syntax, grammar, punctuation, flow, and other niceties. They’re the little things you tackle last, both as a writer and as a writing teacher, as Higher Order Concerns (structure, argument, genre adherence, character development, etc.) must come first in rewrites. However, in a finished work, they are still important to call out.

Comma splices: These are a common issue in this particular text. Annoying writing teacher moment incoming (sorry in advance). A comma splice is a run-on sentence where two independent clauses have been inappropriately joined by a comma. This is a matter of varying punctuation and considering the correct mark to use, because there are several right answers. It could be two sentences divided by a period. It could be a semicolon. It could be an ellipsis. It could be an em dash. What it cannot be, however, is a comma. I know these are commonplace and getting increasingly more difficult to spot, and it might feel unimportant, but what it really signifies is a need to vary punctuation and use the full range available, in order to achieve richer prose and dialogue with different pacing and pauses. In so many cases, when I see a lot of comma splices, I don’t see a lot of other punctuation used in dialogue, and that’s a shame.

Unnatural Dialogue: Natural-sounding dialogue is not easy to achieve, and remember, some of my sense of what is natural may come from living in a different part of the country from the author. As Jenna Harte has taught me, long dialogue chunks often need dividing up with more exchange between the interlocutors; seldom in speech is one person allowed to monologue while the other remains silent. I struggle with all of this myself, but I think the biggest issue I found here was a lot of exposition and character-establishment dumping in dialogue early on. This is extremely common, especially among developing fiction writers, and I think readers should try to be forgiving when they see it. There’s nothing to be done other than to note it, suggest some ways to improve, and trust the author to keep writing and improve over time.

My Rating

As a subversion of a holiday Hallmark story, I give A White Lie Christmas 4.5 out of 5 corgi paws (this rating takes into account my dislike of the Hallmark holiday story as a genre). As a technical execution and experience overall, I give it 3.5 out of 5 corgi paws, with many available opportunities for easy improvement.

I should note that this story is about three chili peppers, which means that it has open-door intimacy with euphemistic and tasteful prose, and that it has two sex scenes, one of which completely spotlights female pleasure, which was nice. It was within the lane of what I prefer for intimate scenes, and did not at all make me cringe in that way, but of course your mileage can and will vary.

Suzy, if you’re reading this, I loved it! I am looking forward to seeing everything you do and write in your career and following it for many years to come. We’re both in early days, and I think we both have a long and interesting road to travel as writers and authors. I am grateful to have you in my circle and to be in yours.

Conclusion and More Things to Read

Want more holiday stories? Suzy is one of the many authors in our holiday romance anthology, Midnight, Mischief, and Mistletoe, which is how I heard about her ARC. As a matter of taste, I do not do full reviews of any anthology I’m in beyond a quick “hey, here are some stories I liked” reviews when I finish something on Goodreads, but Suzy’s story in the anthology was quite fun, and if you go on to read A White Lie Christmas after this and enjoy it, you might enjoy her story there as well. We have several other contemporary romance stories in the collection by Luci Beach, Sandra Baird, and several others, as well as romances in many other subgenres. You can find it here published wide in ebook and paperback format.

Do the holidays make you effing miserable, just like they do Chris and me with our slutty little glasses? Well, I’m in another anthology this week, and this one is full of leaded, gritty detectives in dark worlds protecting the innocent and drinking bourbon. Bourbon and Lead is a dime detective anthology, out now from Raconteur Press, and in it you can find my Starship Valkyrie story “Prompt Critical.” It’s a murder mystery set on a really crappy space cruise around Saturn, and it features death by radiation and a guest appearance from our favorite cinnamon gay, Lt. Geras Vantage from the Vantage stories, like “Crimson Wake,” “Crimson Bride,” and Star Groomsman. You can find it here, and you can even read it free on Kindle Unlimited. As a bonus, you get to enjoy beautiful art made for my story by the talented Cedar Sanderson.

More coming up. I hope to do more reviews like this one, as it’s a good reason for me to keep reading at a steady pace (and not just writing all the time). I still want to do my Moggies of Mars review, but I’ve decided to wait a bit for reasons of professional discretion. Still coming, though!

Do you have an ARC and want the full power of my overeducated gaze to fall upon your prose and think way too hard about it? Feel free to send it my way. I’ll be getting eye surgery soon (speaking of my slutty little glasses), so there will be a few weeks coming up where I’ll be going comparatively dark. If I don’t post again before then, Happy Thanksgiving! Let me know some of the things you’re grateful for in the comments. For me, it’s my family… and eye health!