Ellie Wade, one of the building’s longtime residents, is also not feeling the Christmas Joy this year. She is preparing to move into a nursing home (reluctantly), and is in the process of sorting through her belongings to downsize. Every corner of her apartment holds memories, some good, some bad. But there’s one dress she hesitates to pack up as it represents both the best and worst night of her life.
Ellie and Meg strike up an unlikely friendship and the story of Ellie’s dress comes out. Ellie gifts the gorgeous dress to Meg, hoping that it will bring her more luck, on the condition that she wear it to the building’s Christmas party.
The dress magically fits, and while it eventually leads to the best night of Meg’s life, it also acts as inspiration for Meg to follow a life-long dream of her own, a dream that will help save the crumbling Parkview West, and restore it to its former glory, and keep it as a safe home for all of the current tenants.
The dress and the magic of the holiday season helps both Meg and Ellie find their own happy endings.
Comment: At last, the final entry to the TBR Challenge of 2024. For December, the theme is "It's a Party!" which could mean a lot, but December is also a traditional month for Christmas and New Year parties and I've picked a book where the characters, at some point, need to plan for a party, so...
When Meg Julliard's father dies, she leaves her demanding job at a fashion magazine in New York behind to go back home to Chicago, to take care of the historical building her father owned and managed. Things don't go very well at first, despite the happy welcome of several tenants, who are all in older age gaps, because there's a lot to be done and a lot that needs to be repaired and, apparently not much money to do it. Meg and tenant Ellie become friends and Meg's fashionista side can't help but admire a dress Ellie owns, for its timeless quality. This propels Meg to want to design her own collection and, along with handyman Logan's help, who becomes a friend as well, she enters a competition to win money which could help the renovations the building needs to be classified as historical and, then, have grants to help supporting it. But all challenges have obstacles, will Meg and her friends be able to overcome theirs?
The cover of this story is all about Christmas and I felt it was quite appropriated to this story. I wasn't certain when the party detail would be included but, as expected, it does happen closer to the end of the book, when things are finally solved and everyone can celebrate the festivities. In that regard, I believe this book did meet the challenge.
This is another new author for me, it's the first book I try by Courtney Cole and I had no expectations about her writing style. I only wished for a sweet story, to go along with the season, and in that aspect, I think the criteria was met again. This is a straightforward story, without many distractions and with some situations being dealt with and even "solved" without lots of drama, something that I feel happened because the page count isn't long either.
I liked Meg, she is the narrator and someone who is easy to care about. Of course, the other side of the coin of having a shorter novel is that some things happen a bit too quickly sometimes, or too conveniently staged, and that made those things feel a little underdeveloped, since the author clearly wanted to reach this or that moment without too much fuss or a long setting up. I'm specifically thinking about how quick it felt for Meg to create a few designs and to easily take them in one bag to New York, for what was meant to be an important presentation (or maybe I'm just spoiled by Project Runway...), but I suppose I can ignore certain details since the plot felt alive and fast paced.
The plot does have a lot going on, it's Meg's personal life, then the problems of the building, then trying to find ways to renovate it, how to get money, then the fashion aspects, the interaction with secondary characters, the coincidence of a few situations... I mean, this story clearly was not meant to win any literary prizes and the writing feels a bit all over the place here and there, but it was still engaging to me, it was still interesting in the sense I wanted to see the characters do well and find a way to solve the problems.
There's a romance between Meg and Logan, which is sweet but a little underdeveloped. I feel that, since this is not the focus of the book, it wasn't that bad, and the author could have done better, but in terms of empowering Meg to feel she is worthy of things, including someone who loves her too, this was done well enough. I think the author added a few obstacles for them which were so... out of place, that I couldn't help but think it was just a easy way to add that drama, but that aside, the romance was OK for the overall story.
I was more interested, to be fair, in the dress that propelled the whole thing, and I was even wondering if there would be some kind of magical realism in this story but no. Things are a lot simpler than that and the power of Meg's accomplishments is only on her own self and in how she has the support of those who like her. Still, the idea of the dress was a great one, and obviously quite a theme for me, from the top of my head this is the third or fourth novel I remember reading where a dress is almost a character too, in relation to how its existence helps the characters or not. I also liked the connection of it to Ellie's story in the past and why she has this dress now. Under developed sub plot of course, but still sweetly solved.
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