Hello everyone!
Merry Christmas and Happy Boxing Day if you celebrate it!
I hope you've had some fantastic days with family, friends and loved ones, and that the time spent together was full of joy and happy moments.
In the end, that's what it's all about, isn't it?
A lot of the times we convince ourselves it's about the presents we gift one another, and in recent years this capitalistic approach has certainly almost overpowered the simple message of just BEING, especially if you don't get to see the people closest to you that often.
Me, I've had way too much good food and even better laughs, and I'm still rolling around from both.
So to get back in shape just a little bit, here's my book blog post for this week, of course with another Christmas story since December isn't nearly over yet, and obviously it's going to be another Serenity Woods one.
When in doubt, turn to your favourite authors.
You'll find links to previous blog posts down at the bottom of this page, like you normally would.
His Christmas Present is the third in Ms Woods' series of Christmas Wishes, and I think I first read it off-hand, as an afterthought, while I was super bored.
I do remember never having read it again since, though, not until this Christmas season at least.
SO, the story goes like this:
Megan and Dion have sort of had a thing for each other since they were kids, though to be fair it was a gradual progression from really good friends to crush. Dion originally lived in New Zealand with his mother, but when she passed away, he was taken in by Megan's family to get his feet back under him (he was just fifteen at the time), even though his father wanted him in the UK.
There, things kind of go south after Dion kisses Megan during the midwinter party her parents host at their house, because her dad catches them, accuses Dion of trying to throw their kindness back into their faces by seducing their daughter, and packs him onto the first flight to the UK.
So much for that; neither of the kids has any say in the situation whatsoever, nor can they defend themselves against the judge, jury and executioner that is Megan's father.
Almost a decade later, the pair run into one another again in Prague, where Megan's getting over a bad breakup (she walked in on her fiancé cheating on her) and Dion is there for a merger with a company.
The two of them hit it off straight away like they used to when Dion had still been in New Zealand, and in the end get together for some wild, steamy monkey sex, as Megan calls it.
Honestly, it's hot. You might need to use a fan when you read those sections!
After that, however, they go their separate ways, since going in it was on the understanding (on both sides) that it wasn't going to be anything lasting, just a one night stand.
Yeah, that gets complicated really fast when Megan figures out she's pregnant and eventually gives birth to a son, Harry, because she doesn't tell Dion about the boy, or about the pregnancy in general really.
Dion, meanwhile, has the rug pulled out from under him back home where he's expecting to be made CEO of his dad's company after the old man retires, but in a surprising twist (despite the fact Dion is undoubtedly the most suited for the role and the person who did the most for the company as a whole since starting there) daddy-o hands his company over to one of his other sons, Dion's stepbrother.
Hurt and betrayed, Dion books a flight to New Zealand to clear his head for a few weeks, even though his dad is recovering from a heart attack, and ends up staying with Sean, his former best friend, and coincidentally Megan's brother.
Also coincidentally the guy who A doesn't tell his sister Dion's coming and B doesn't tell Dion that she's going to be there with her baby, while he's at it.
Dion does the math, obviously, and figures out Harry's his son, so on top of all the other crumbling things in his life, that's another weight that he didn't know about but is suddenly added to the pile.
Megan is pissed with Sean, too, him and her sister-in-law both, because while on the one hand they did mean well, their execution was SEVERELY lacking, and taking it into their own hands means they took the control away from Megan and Dion and forced them into a situation that's both bad and could have been avoided if they'd just kept their noses out of what wasn't their business.
Dion isn't sure what he's going to do in any event - he and Megan do talk a little bit, and slowly, cautiously, like two wounded animals, start drawing close again, but he has no idea what to do with a baby, and having been denied the process of getting used to the fact there's going to BE a baby to begin with, he needs to learn how to swim in very deep water with no life jacket.
Things eventually go from bad to worse when, during the Christmas party at Megan's parents' house, he receives a phone call that tells him his father passed away.
Also, that the old man dictated a letter to Dion, saying the reason he didn't make him CEO was because he didn't want Dion to turn out like him, urging him to instead find a good woman, and make a family. You know, be happy and all that jazz.
Of course this backfires spectacularly because it's just another one of the decisions made FOR Dion as if he's a child incapable of making his own choices, and he falls apart completely, not helped by the fact that Megan keeps pushing and pushing and actually has the nerve to tell him he left her in Prague - when both of them had agreed, at the time, that it wasn't going to mean anything. The fact that she states he should have just divined how she felt about him made my eyes roll so far I was terrified they'd end up stuck looking into the back of my head!
Anyway, some consolation sexy times later (which I'm on the fence about since Dion said no), Megan leaves Dion and Harry alone, and Dion finally starts bonding with his son, deciding to resign from his position in the UK and move to New Zealand permanently, buying an engagement ring for Megan and asking her to start again, like a real family, maybe making another Christmas present for themselves. Harry doesn't want to be lonely, does he?
With that, the story comes to a close on a message of hope for a better future, which is fitting for its setting AND the time of year!
However, I have to add a few notes:
on Goodreads, I gave this book 4 stars, but I gave those because of the writing style, the cohesiveness of the story, the festive feeling, and how well it was all put together. Not to mention Dion - I just wanted to hug Dion.
The other characters, however ...
I felt so bad for Dion when reading this book. He literally can't make his own decisions because everyone and their mother is making them for him, taking his life right out of his hands, and then expecting him to go with it, looking thoroughly perplexed when he loses it and tells them where to shove it.
Excuse me, but who died and made you lot kings of the universe?
If you look at the string of events starting with the midwinter party: Megan's dad literally saw a situation and, instead of at least waiting until he cooled down so he could talk to the two kids and explain that, you know, maybe they shouldn't do what they were doing or that they wait, simply packed Dion up like he was a thing to be disposed of, and he never even apologised for it, not even years later when he himself admits, hey, we're all adults here!
Then Dion's dad "doing what he thought was right for Dion" without actually consulting Dion about it, basically destroying his son's life work on some half-assed chivalrous notion that he can force his son to be happy by making sure he doesn't get the position he wants.
Yay.
And of course, Megan, not telling him he has a son because she was "afraid of rejection" and thus robbing Dion of a chance to be an active participant in any decisions she made, cutting him off from that decision making process and again making him stand outside looking in. Then on top of that having the AUDACITY to call him out saying he LEFT HER! I stared at the page like Megan was a character I'd never seen before. Men do not know how to read a woman's mind, you need to tell them, not expect them to just pull things out of thin air!
This is sort of like thinking about something the guy is supposed to do, but not telling him, then getting mad at him for not doing it WHEN HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HE SHOULD HAVE DONE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE BECAUSE IT WAS ALL IN THE GIRL'S HEAD AND SHE COULDN'T BE BOTHERED TO OPEN HER MOUTH.
I hate this kind of thing, I really do. No wonder Dion reacted emotionally and lashed out, and while what he said wasn't okay - he was way more hurt in this equation than Megan, because he was forced to just accept something without being given the chance to be an active participant in the process that led up to this something.
All in all, the characters all treated Dion abysmally in this one, and I was unhappy with the lot of them. It would've served them right if he told them to stick it, promised to send money, then just took off to do his own thing.
Let them put THAT in their moustache and smoke it!
Grrr.
xx
*image not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment