Title: Their Christmas Miracle Author: Barbara Wallace
Published: November 1, 2018
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 256
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Lost: One wife and mother.
Found: Their forever family?
Finding the wife he’d believed was lost to him forever in a remote Scottish village seems like a miracle to wealthy CEO Thomas Collier. Rosalind is suffering from amnesia—she can’t remember anything from before her accident, including her husband and their daughter! As Christmas draws near, back in their London penthouse, can Thomas help Rosalind regain her past and embrace the loving future they all deserve?
While I wasn’t wildly fond of Their Christmas Miracle, I thought it was a nice holiday story about second chances and compromises and…amnesia. I know the romance community likes to shudder when the topic of amnesiac romance novels comes up, but this shows that in the right hands, this trope can be worth reading. In this book, Barbara Wallace delivers an emotional, mature not-quite-a-romance tale for readers in search of something festive.
How does the amnesia, or “dissociative fugue,” work in this story? The author mentions in her foreword that she was attempting to do something “different” with the typical amnesiac heroine trope in this book, and I think she achieved that. My experience with amnesia in romance is usually in the context of romantic suspense (such as the classic Harlequin Intrigue, Pregnesia). Wallace does things differently here. In Their Christmas Miracle, Thomas Collier discovers his wife, Rosalind, in a remote pub in northern Scotland, and while she doesn’t remember a blessed thing about their life together, she agrees to fly down to London for Christmas. For myself, I found that it was easier to buy into the protagonists finding a deep and genuine love if they…had been in love in the first place, prior to the amnesia setting in. It also helps that Rosalind was never a damsel in need of her husband’s rescuing.
Their Christmas Miracle takes place in the three weeks leading up to Christmas. During that time, Thomas and Rosalind spend some fun times together, and also with their young daughter, Maddie. It seems like Rosalind has stepped back into the perfect life: gorgeous penthouse, successful husband, adoring child—yet it doesn’t feel right. Naturally, Rosalind slowly begins regaining her memories, and finds that she doesn’t like what her old life was like before. She soon remembers that before her accident, she was on the verge of leaving Thomas for good! The question Rosalind has to ask: is a second chance even worth it?
As is evident, the majority of the book is not really about falling in love, or even rekindling an old romance—which is why I don’t really consider this to be a romance novel under the standard RWA definition. This is not a book about falling in love; it’s a book about saving a marriage. That’s hard work, and it requires a great deal of introspection and humbleness. Wallace does her best, given the context of the plot, but Their Christmas Miracle is a lot more soul-searching and remorseful than it is holly or jolly.
Yet ultimately, Thomas and Rosalind are both able to admit to their failings and engage honestly with the reparation process, and just in time for Santa Claus to visit!
