Book Review: I'll Be Gone For Christmas

I adore the movie The Holiday. It’s a must-watch for me every year — and I watch it several times every holiday season I might add. Once, in grad school, I watched it so much that my roomie (and fellow Waffle, Chelsea) walked into my room, saw me watching it for the third time that week, and said “honey that’s enough.” All this to say that when I hear there’s a Christmas-themed romance novel with the same premise? Count me all the way in.

Georgia K. Boone’s I’ll Be Gone For Christmas follows two women, Bee and Clover, who for reasons of their own decide to swap houses ahead of Christmas to get away from the drama and chaos of their home lives. For Clover, she needs distance from her small Ohio town as the anniversary of her mother’s death approaches, while San Francisco-based Bee needs space from her perfectionist parents, and high-achieving twin sister, who will no doubt hold a major professional blunder against her. Once they switch places, it doesn’t take long for Bee to meet Clover’s ex fiance Knox, and for Clover to meet Bee’s sister Beth, and for sparks to respectively fly..

While the plot is familiar in that it is very much like The Holiday, the novel also adds a dimension of great personal pain for both of the heroines in the kind of unique way that so beautifully suits a novel as opposed to a visual medium. Yet it also mixes in a Hallmark Christmas Movie type vibe, which makes it even more up my alley as those are the kinds of movies I look forward to each year. With all these elements combined, I’ll Be Gone For Christmas is a must-read this holiday season.

I’ll Be Gone For Christmas hits shelves on October 8. Special thank you to Avon Books for the advance copy for review purposes.