LitPick Review
Bryan Mooney’s Christmas Actually opens with the bustling office of Baltimore Star Media Group in Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD. Colleagues Holly, Frankie, Diego, Jakob, and Josh discuss their upcoming Christmas plans. Holly, enjoying her last meeting with the Baltimore Star, shares that she will be taking in a full, traditional Christmas at home with family in Vermont. Holly further plans to surprise her parents by accepting the CEO position at Jamison Enterprises, her mother’s children’s book company. Frankie boasts that Christmas should be spent on yourself free of the guilt of a neglected family. Convinced in the idea of a guilt-free Christmas, Diego reveals he will spend Christmas at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico away from his close-nit California family. Jakob admits that he has never celebrated Christmas and intends to continue abstaining the holiday. Josh, widow and boss of the media group, hopes his newlywed daughter and husband will travel from London to celebrate with him. Missing from the meeting is young sales representative, Maddie, who will spending the beginning of Christmas break catching up on the many ignored emails and voicemails crucial for her career. After a goodbye celebration with cake, Holly makes the long journey from Baltimore to Pine Tree, Vermont to begin celebrating Christmas and her new career. Holly is surprised by a huge shift in her plans when her ex-boyfriend and almost fiancé, Travis, is thrust back into her life. Fitting into the Christmas romance genre, themes of budding relationships, rekindled relationships, and finding oneself are woven throughout. The characters learn the deeper meaning of Christmas as their original plans change for the better. Each chapter features a different colleague moving the storyline as if it were already a made-for-television Christmas movie.
Opinion:
Bryan Mooney’s Christmas Actually weaves nostalgia, tradition, surprises, newness, and adventure into a satisfying tale of several colleagues and their Christmas week adventures. Holly’s Christmas in Vermont is picturesque and filled with the same warm, Christmas cheer as Mooney’s Christmas in Vermont. Mooney excelled in providing a familiar taste for his perfect Christmas descriptions complete with cookies and hot chocolate. However, he also endeavored into engaging descriptions of Baltimore’s trendy Inner Harbor, Mexican beach resort, and a secluded mountain cabin. As someone who has visited Inner Harbor on several occasions, I found Mooney’s words were beautiful and accurate for the intriguing city. Fond memories of majestic Inner Harbor were opened as Mooney’s characters went about their Christmas preparations. As Mooney wove the lives of each character throughout his countdown to Christmas chapters, he also utilized the diverse settings to create a depth to the characters and events. The settings were a powerful companion to the characters’ personalities and their growth as they found the meaning of Christmas. Along with the setting, Mooney employed phone call conversations to help facilitate the transition between character story lines and help root the plot throughout each transition. At first, the end of each chapter leaves the reader wanting more of the storyline of that character. By the middle of the book, the tempo of the character changes is rhythmic and enjoyable to sail through the stories as the plots intertwine and the characters grow in their journey to finding the joy of Christmas.
