KRISTIN HANNAH
Edition read: Hardback, Ballantine Books, 2005
How acquired: Bought.
First line: Christmas parties are the star on the top of my “don’t” list this year.
(Synopsis below.)
My thoughts: I went into this book expecting a typical heartwarming Christmas story. You know the type, a character facing a crossroads, maybe not looking forward to all the Christmas holidaying but eventually, through friends or faith or a new love, finding their Christmas spirit. What I got was an incredible story of a woman at a crossroads, anxious to escape her life and finding…herself, her second chance at happiness…
Ok, so it still sounds like a typical heartwarming Christmas story. But it is so much more than that. And so not typical but completely unexpected.
With Christmas practically upon her, Joy, a high school librarian, is struggling to get into the holiday spirit. She’s recently divorced. She and her sister, who used to be her best friend, are estranged after her sister betrayed her in the worst possible way. On the last day of school before the Christmas break, she’s forced herself to go out and buy a tree, but when she arrives home her sister is waiting for her. Horrified at the news her sister gives her, irrefutable evidence of her betrayal (like she even needed more evidence), Joy feels suffocated and takes off. When she finds herself at the airport, she sees on the departures board a town in Canada called Hope. It turns out to be a small chartered plane, and the counter attendant points out the man who chartered it and says to check with him.
“Excuse me,” I say, trying – without much success – to smile. “I need Hope.”
Since there is one empty seat, he agrees to sell it to her.
But the plane crashes in the Olympic rain forest of Washington state. Up until this point, I was already fairly invested. The narration is in first person POV, and is engaging and lyrical. Joy’s account of the plane crash, which she describes second by second in detail, was mesmerizing and gave me chills. She survives the crash, in incredible pain but relatively unharmed, and manages to flee towards the woods just before the plane explodes, briefly losing consciousness. And then upon waking, seeing ambulances and first responders in the distance, she realizes that nobody knew she was on the plane, nobody will be missing her until school resumes after the holidays, nobody will be looking for her. So instead of walking towards rescue, she turns and walks away. This is apparently the point in the story where a lot of readers were turned off. There are a lot of reviews on Goodreads complaining about the implausibility and having to suspend disbelief. But not me. I was right there with her, hanging on her every word, never doubting her for one minute.
While on the plane she read an article in a magazine about a fishing lodge in Rain Valley, and when she realizes she is close by, she seeks it out, only to find it rundown, with a for sale sign. She doesn’t see the owner anywhere, but his son, Bobby, shows her to a room. In the morning, she meets his father, Daniel, who basically ignores her. He spends all his time making repairs around the lodge in preparation for selling it, and Joy finds herself either spending time alone, exploring and taking pictures, or hanging out with Bobby, an unhappy eight year old who misses his recently deceased mother and is angry at his father for planning to move them away. The bond that grows between Joy and Bobby is indeed heartwarming, while Daniel’s gruffness and vacillating between seeming to welcome her and ignoring her begins to hurt her feelings.
But as Joy is slowly falling for Daniel, and finding happiness and contentment at the lodge, the story suddenly took a severe left turn and went off in a direction I never saw coming. And I spent much of the rest of the book on tenterhooks, not knowing whether to be disappointed or hopeful.
To say this book just completely swept me off my feet is an understatement. I loved it. I loved it so much that when I turned the last page, I almost wanted to go back to page one and start over. In fact I’m still tempted to do so, because with the benefit of hindsight I’m sure I would pick up on things that neither Joy nor I could possibly have understood the first time around.
If I could give this book more than five stars I would.
Synopsis from dust jacket:
Joy Candellaro used to love Christmas more than any other time of the year. Now, as the holiday approaches, she finds herself at loose ends. Recently divorced and estranged from her sister, she can’t summon the old enthusiasm for celebrating. So without telling anyone, she buys a ticket and boards a plane bound for the rural Northwest.
Yet Joy’s best-laid plans go terribly awry. The plane crashes deep in the darkness of a forest. Miraculously, Joy and her fellow passengers walk away from the wrekage as the plane explodes. There, amid the towering trees, Joy makes a bold and desperate decision to leave her ordinary life behind and embark on an adventure...just for the holidays.
Following the death of his ex-wife, Daniel O’Shea has returned to the small town of Rain Valley. Now he is a single father facing his son’s first Christmas without a mother. Eight-year-old Bobby isn’t making it easy – the boy has closed himself off from the world, surrounding himself with imaginary friends.
When Joy and Bobby meet, they form an instnat bond. Thrown together by fate, these wounded souls will be touched by the true spirit of Christmas and remember what it means to be a family.
Then a dramatic turn of events shows Joy the price of starting over. On a magical Christmas Eve she will come face-to-face with a startling truth. Now she must decide: In a time of impossible dreams and unexpected chances, can she find the faith to reach for the love she has found...and the new life only she believes in?
