CW/TW: abusive (likely narcissistic) parent, alcoholism (both self and parents), grief, death
Tara: A few weeks ago, Sarah slacked me with the following:
Tara
Season of Love is so good
It’s so freaking good.
So, I did what any other smart person would do and started reading it. And guess what? She was completely and totally right.
Sarah: I do like it when I’m right.
Tara: Miriam Blum lives in Charleston with her fiancee, who she loves but is not in love with, and she’s weeks away from opening her own art studio and storefront. Her life is turned upside down when Miriam’s mother calls to say that her great aunt Cass, the person who always loved Miriam best, has died. Miriam drops everything and to sit shiva with all the people she left behind a decade ago at Cass’s Christmas tree farm, Carrigan’s.
Noelle Northwood is the farm manager at Carrigan’s and she’s grieving Cass’s loss as much as the rest of the family. So much so that Noelle avoids Miriam like the plague to avoid telling her off for missing Cass’s remaining years, among other things. Noelle can’t dodge Miriam any longer when Cass’s will is read and it comes out that Carrigan’s a) has a money problem, and b) has been left in equal parts to Miriam, Noelle, Noelle’s best friend/Miriam’s cousin Hannah, and Levi, who is Hannah’s absent ex and the third childhood Musketeer to Hannah and Miriam.
Sarah: So basically, Miriam and Noelle have to contend with their attraction and its resulting complications. Noelle, Miriam, and Hannah have to figure out how to save Carrigan’s while preserving its Christmas traditions and also expanding them for better financial security for themselves and the property. Everyone has to deal with the emotional aftermath of Cass’s death, and the hurt and confusion caused by Miriam’s having stayed away from Carrigan’s for ten years.
If you take every Hallmark holiday movie trope, infuse them with queerness and then subvert the hell out of them all, you have this book.
Tara: It is so, SO tempting to be lazy and say “I love everything!” because I really do. This is a perfect book for me, but I know that won’t cut it.
Sarah: Agreed. I read this in about a day, my eyes getting bigger and bigger as the charm level increased and the plot and characters surprised me. I have recommended and gifted this book to at least four people already.
Tara: So, I’ve been thinking about it and I still don’t know whether I love Noelle or Miriam more. I don’t think I can choose! What I do know for sure is that I want to hang out with them at Carrigan’s.
Noelle has nothing but loyalty for her people, which at the beginning is Hannah, Cass, and the Matthewses (they help run the farm and its accompanying suite of rooms where guests can stay) and other marvelous folks who appear later in the novel. Eventually, once she learns more about why Miriam stayed away so long, that list includes her, too. I also love that Noelle is a fat butch lesbian and that both her fatness and butchness are celebrated, especially by Miriam. It’s rare to see fat butches get that good, good representation and it made my heart happy to see it here.
Sarah: I love, love, LOVE that Miriam and Noelle are so very into each other, and they’re surrounded by so much emotional drama that, while they don’t want to create more complications, they do. They’re both so flummoxed by one another and by the situation they’re in.
Tara: Right?! And Miriam is so delightfully complex. She doesn’t let people in, including her fiancee, and for damn good reason, which we’ll get into in a bit. However, she still has a deep desire to help people and has forged her own path as an artist. Some of that includes being a social media influencer and I appreciated seeing how she deliberately keeps much of herself separate from her online persona. Miriam is very aware of the way some people behave when they have a parasocial relationship with someone they only know from seeing them online.
Sarah: Yes, Miriam’s careful curation of her online persona was fascinating. It was very real and thoughtful and highlighted how intelligent and creative she is in terms of her own brand and personality, while also protecting herself.
Tara: I was also surprised to see how much Cass figured in the story. For someone who was dead before the first word takes place, she is as much a fully realized character as everyone else. I only wish we had a chance to see her in her fullest self, because she’d clearly been a firecracker.
Both Noelle and Miriam are living with trauma that they experienced in their past and it’s so much more than a mention. We learn about how it’s impacted their lives so far and we see how it informs the way they interact, from their early combativeness to their actual relationship development.
Miriam is estranged from her family because her father is an abusive asshole.
Sarah: EXTREME ASSHOLE.
Tara: His abuse is very much of the controlling narcissism type, although I’m not a psychologist and he isn’t diagnosed in the story. When Miriam knows Noelle much better, she explains that he only cared about himself, his image, and his business. He did some pretty hateful things to try to keep her under his thumb, so I would have been happy to hear he’d driven off the side of a cliff, but alas.
Noelle’s trauma is also about her parents, who were both alcoholics. Although she’s in sobriety now and has been for years, Noelle shares that she started drinking at 10 years of age, binge drinking at 13, and stopped at 18. When Noelle did become sober, her parents didn’t and, worse, they dropped contact with her and died a few years later, before she could reconcile with them.
Sarah: There is a lot of grief in the back story of the characters, especially the type of grief that comes with estrangement and the absence of reconciliation or the possibility of it. I love how Noelle and Miriam both try to compartmentalize everything and eventually realize that their respective sets of emotional baggage are bursting out of the zippers and need to be dealt with collectively.
Tara: The writing itself is so special that I highlighted passage after passage. I think it’s because it manages to perfectly balance its difficult subject matter and the associated vulnerability with humour. For example, I loved this musing from Noelle, before she and Miriam are on each others’ good sides:
All of her nerve endings became raw when Miriam was in the room. She didn’t like it. When Miriam’s inner lights were turned on, when she was present, she was sparkly and fascinating, and Noelle wanted to collect her like a raccoon collecting treasure. When her lights were off, when she went away from herself and seemed to almost leave her body, Noelle wanted to find out why and turn them back on. It annoyed her.
Sarah: The writing is indeed gorgeous. I snort laughed at and highlighted SO many paragraphs, too. I love how Miriam describes Noelle to her face and how her compliments are hilarious:
Miriam didn’t realize Noelle had been deliberately avoiding her, and she didn’t understand how Noelle could already dislike her so much. Their only conversation was when Miriam had walked into the kitchen and been knocked back on her feels by the sight of a blistering hot fat butch in suspenders — all broad shoulders and hips a wide revelation.
The part that resonated with me so deeply is the Jewishness of the characters. I did a podcast bonus episode squeeing about this book, and I’ve been telling so many people about it. I also recorded a podcast episode with the author and the editor of this book — stay tuned for that. But what I said then and what I’ll say over and over again is how this book captures the very unique and isolating feeling of being Jewish when the entire world is exploding with Christmas.
If you don’t celebrate Christmas, well, too bad: it’s everywhere. It can feel inescapable, smothering, and alienating to the point of incredible loneliness. It can also feel more important to hold onto traditions that are yours. That feeling is captured in this story on several levels. Miriam, Hannah, Cass, and the Matthewses, are all Jewish, and they’re running a Christmas tree farm with holiday activities nonstop through December. The farm is located adjacent to a town called Advent, which is equally hosed down with Christmas each year. So. Much. Christmas.
But the Jewish characters are quiet and relentless in their keeping of Jewish customs and traditions, even as they literally run a Christmas Farm/Amusement Village next to Christmas Town. Their approach isn’t aggressive or born out of affront or resentment. They just continue on, quietly keeping time amid the maelstrom of the holiday. They sit shiva, they celebrate Hanukkah, and each Shabbat there’s challah and candles and blessings. That gentle determination to center and maintain their own observances and culture amidst a veritable avalanche of Christmas was poignant and powerful for me. Everything about it felt so familiar, to the point that it gave me chest tingles and made my eyes sting.
And, bonus, there are so many pop culture surprises and hidden references (I’d call them “Easter eggs” but again, they’re Jewish). It’s delightful.
Like I said, I’ve gifted this book to people, I’ve told everyone I can think of about it, and when Tara started reading it, I was so excited to review it together. If a queer found family story featuring hot butch lesbians, Jewish folks running a Christmas tree farm, and healing of past hurts sounds like your kind of book, you will adore this.
Tara: There’s nothing I didn’t love about this story. Truly everything worked for me, from the characters to the writing style to the themes, even when they’re difficult. This is going straight to my to-reread pile, because I can see myself reading this every December.
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Thanks!
Holiday romances (of all faiths) can be hit or miss with me, but you sold me on this one!
I was going to fight if this was anything less than a squee LOL. I loved this story with my whole heart. The way Greer handled their respective traumas was incredibly nuanced and thoughtful. I was also impressed with how horny Miriam and Noelle are for each other when this is a closed door romance! Also: absolutely dying for book 2.
This sounds lovely! Thank you for the squee, Sarah and Tara.
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes!!!
Oh this sounds great!!