There’s Something About Christmas by Debbie Macomber was a rapid read about an aspiring journalist named Emma Collins who has been given an assignment to interview three finalists in a fruitcake contest. These three finalists live in Washington state, yet instead of Emma driving to each place where the finalists live, her boss has arranged for her to be flown there because of some advertising deal he has made with the air company. Emma therefore has to travel by Cessna or floatplane. She is not thrilled by the idea of flying and the small planes make her even more nervous.
Typical Macomber modus operandi is that her women protagonists fall in love with men who, in their own words, are “bad guys”. This is not news to me, as I have read over twenty of her works. I suppose that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, yet it puts women back fifty years when pilot Oliver Hamilton takes liberties with Emma and smacks a kiss on her when the reader clearly knows that she doesn’t like him. It doesn’t help his case either to win over Emma by proclaiming himself to be irresistible. Yet this is typical Macomber too: the woman is always conflicted, torn between her immediate revulsion of the guy and the unexpected overwhelming wash of passion that floods her. What drama for a novel, isn’t it, when the protagonist can’t decide whether she loves or detests the guy?
Wouldn’t the average heterosexual woman run away from a man if she felt like this about him:
“He took delight in making her uncomfortable, which she considered a juvenile trait–and one that seemed particularly typical of men.”
By writing that, Macomber is painting all men as no different from preteen boys who enjoy teasing (or tormenting) girls. Her male reader base would find such a remark objectionable. Since her male reader population is minimal, their feelings are expendable. In the game of love, men can’t be helped, it seems, as this behaviour is “typical of men”. Macomber is telling women to excuse such behaviour, even if being around such men makes you uncomfortable. Emma should run for the hills.
This novel was a light read of 284 pages, and I got through it in two days. Macomber can indeed write a story that flows well and the dialogue seemed real. I didn’t buy how Emma fell in love with Oliver when only in a previous chapter she loathed sitting next to him. The three fruitcake recipe finalists all had different stories to tell about how their Christmas baking creations came to light. This provided the only real Christmas content to the novel. Their genuine recipes were included in the book.