Stevie‘s review of Baby It’s Cold Outside by Emily Bell
Contemporary Holiday Romance published by Penguin 02 Sep 21
I started reading holiday romances early this year, although there’s no guarantee that’ll mean I read more than I do most years. This was the first one I picked up, and it was a bit of a mixed bag plotwise. Being set mainly in 2019, with a bunch of flashbacks to 2009, the story managed to avoid talking about the pandemic and lockdowns in the main, which is probably what we need for light reading over the coming winter. On the other hand, I found the apparent leading man difficult to warm to in the flashbacks, and his appearance in the present day came rather late in the story, well after we’d learned all about him through Our Heroine’s rather rose-tinted memories.
Secondary school music teacher Norah Jones was expecting to spend Christmas with her mother and younger brother – as she has every year since her father’s death – but a last-minute change of plan is forced upon her by mother’s impulsive decision to do something else. Not wanting to impose on any of her coupled-up friends and relatives, Norah thinks back to a promise she made to her holiday romance partner in the summer of 2009 and books a holiday in Dublin with the aim of meeting up with him on Christmas Eve. Although they have long since lost touch, Norah is certain that Andrew will also have remembered the plan to meet at his favourite cafe for Christmas 2019.
Realising she will have time on her hands before the planned meeting, Norah persuades Joe, the one other singleton amongst her friends, to accompany her to Dublin to show her around the parts he’s visited before. This leads to a bunch of increasingly unlikely adventures for the pair, all of which seem at least as fun as Norah’s memories of Andrew and Italy. Joe is also tied up in Norah’s memories of her Dad, which makes him even more of a sympathetic character for me, and I did find myself half hoping that Andrew would fail to turn up. The actual ending to that ‘will-they-won’t-they?’ plot-line was actually quite satisfying, but the book then rushed through 2020 in a bit of a whistlestop pandemic-tour. I think I’d rather have had the book end with Norah’s conclusions on the meeting and maybe a little ‘after I returned home, we…’ as a final chapter. I’ve stated my aversion to epilogues enough times in the past, of course.
The two intertwined main plots, set in 2009 and 2019, respectively, worked well, especially the more current one, and I also liked the earlier snippets of Norah’s memories that were wound into them. I enjoyed too meeting the friends she had kept up with since sixth form days and the colleagues and pupils at her current school. Overall, this was a fun read, and I hope to read more from the author.
Grade: B
Summary:
FATE PULLED THEM APART BUT NOT BEFORE THEY MADE A PROMISE.
TEN CHRISTMASES LATER, WILL THEIR WISH COME TRUE? . . .
As Norah battles through the bustling December crowds, she hears the notes of a song that transports her back to the most romantic week of her life.
After meeting on a blissful holiday, but knowing they had to part, a boy named Andrew made her a promise:
If they are both single on Christmas Eve in ten years’ time, they will meet under the clock on Grafton Street, Dublin.
Norah has no idea if he will remember, but she has nothing to lose.
So, hoping for a Christmas miracle, she heads to Dublin. To that clock. And, maybe, to Andrew.
But it wouldn’t be Christmas without a few surprises . . .
Read an excerpt.
