ALL IN FOR CHRISTMAS

A Christmas romance all about life’s lost chances.

In her latest novel, Baird introduces readers to ninth grade English teacher Paige Pierce, who’s caught up in organizational efforts to launch her “Paws and Read” literacy program. Paige is happy and upbeat, professionally dedicated, and seldom given to maudlin sentimentality when it comes to her single status. “I would be involved with someone, if the right person had come along,” she thinks. “But no one’s ever seemed just right and, after a few short months, each union’s fizzled.” When she’s being honest with herself, Paige is willing to admit this isn’t precisely true. One union seemed exactly right: her relationship with Dean Burton, two years her senior, who moved away from town and left her floundering. Nowadays, she tells herself that she prefers the single life. “Who needs kids and sleepless nights? A messy house…laundry? Not me, thankfully.” But when a celestial event known as “the Christmas Comet” seems to sweep her into an alternate reality in which she’s married to Dean and the mother of two little children, all those certainties start to wobble. “You’re living on the cusp of two realities,” she’s told by the novel’s requisite Mystery Character (here called “Mary Christmas”). “You’re trying to discern whether you’ve made the very best choices.” As a magic advent calendar seems to count down the days she can remain in Reality 2, Paige must decide what those very best choices are. Can she stay in this new world where she has the life she denied she ever wanted? Does she want to stay?

Baird takes the familiar old formula of It’s a Wonderful Life and plays with it in inventive ways. She avoids the overly simplistic gambit of portraying the life of Reality 1 as dreary or horrible in some way (although readers might not quite believe Paige’s own protestations about how great, great, great it is to be single). She likewise doesn’t insult her readers by giving Reality 2’s Paige a picture-perfect existence free of mess or headaches. Baird also offers a sensitive portrayal of Paige’s gradual fading of wariness about Reality 2. “After the initial bout of disorientation, I’ve found my way in the woods,” she thinks once her comfort grows. “And it’s not dark and scary here. It’s a happy and protected place.” Her husband, children, and dog make Reality 2 simply more fulfilling than her life in Reality 1, which adds dramatic intensity to her sense that whatever advent-calendar magic is giving her this wonderful life is inexorably running out. Once Paige shares her knowledge of these dual realities with Reality 2’s Dean, Baird broadens narrative opportunities to explore what really constitutes a happily-ever-after romance ending. And along the way, she deftly weaves in all the expected rewards of the genre; readers get to savor the sheer comfort of Paige’s love for Dean. “I relax against him and sigh, enjoying this special moment,” she thinks in one of many such moments. “I love sitting beside him and feeling his body warmth seep into mine.” Readers will universally know which Reality they’re rooting for.

A heartwarming, refreshingly nuanced take on the old fantasy standard of the road not taken.