CBR14 BINGO: Holiday square (BINGO! Cold to Holiday BINGO! Gaslight to Elephant. BLACKOUT!!!)
(Christmas romance is about as holiday as you can get, I think, and a great way to hit the bingo blackout.)
I love holiday romance movies. All of them. I can snort-laugh while I wrap presents when half watching the really terrible ones. I can snuggle up on the couch under my twinkle lights and fall right into the good ones. I can hunt down and bookmark the 10 or so that I have to watch every single year or it just isn’t Christmas. ALL OF THEM.
One of the latter is the 12 Dates of Christmas circa 2011 with Amy Smart and Mark-Paul Gosselaar. (It’s on Hulu. Give it a go.) When this title popped up I assumed it was the book it was based on so I snatched it up. I didn’t, however, check the publication date which turns out was this year. Different story altogether. There are several novels and a reality dating show all sharing this title. Who knew?
Kate, a designer, lives in a tiny village in England in the house she grew up in. After years in London, she returned to help her father out after her mother deserts him and moves to Spain with a lover. Since Kate can work remotely, for the most part, she decides to stay in town where her two best childhood friends, Laura and Matt, also live. Laura, who is married with two children, thinks that Kate’s love life could use a little boost and encourages her to sign up for a 12 Dates of Christmas singles event to get her dating mojo back. Over the weeks leading up to Christmas, Kate will meet with 12 different men at various curated outings to hopefully find a prospective mate.
Under the glow of twinkle lights and with a lot of hot spiced beverages in hand, Kate and her dates build disastrous gingerbread houses, get trapped in uncomfortable escape rooms, and salsa dance the night away. In between, and in some of the best parts of the book, Kate tromps around the snow-covered village drinking lots of coffee, baking piles of treats, and spending time with her friends, family, and the quirky villagers that have known her for her entire life.
Kate definitely has a Bridget Jones vibe (at least Bridget Jones if she had her shit a bit more together) and her wayward mother is VERY reminiscent of Bridget’s. It’s a cute little book that falls into the category of something that I would totally love to watch on screen this time of year.