Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Happy New Year! Wow, we’ve made it to the end of the year and it sure was a wild one. I got a dog this year, had my first concussion, and wrote/hosted 3 murder mystery parties! Well, technically the third one is tonight for my annual family new years mystery, but it counts. Anyway, to wrap up my reading year, I ended up reading 40 books in 2023. Woohoo! I was aiming for 24 and hit that pretty early, so changed my goal to 36 and still surpassed that. And one of my last books of the year was this month’s book of the month, Three Holidays and a Wedding by Uzma Jalaluddin and Marissa Stapley. And to accompany this month’s review, I made a Wedding Bells cocktail.
Wedding Bells Recipe
1oz Gin
0.75oz Cherry Brandy
0.75oz Sweet Vermouth
0.5oz Pineapple Juice*
0.75oz Orange Juice
1 Orange Wheel
*This is an optional ingredient.
In a cocktail shaker with ice, add all liquid ingredients. Shake for approximately 10 seconds, then strain into a coupe glass. Garnish and enjoy!
This one was interesting. I think I would change it slightly if I were to make it again. Mainly, I’d add less sweet vermouth, making it a 1/4oz instead. I didn’t dislike this drink, I just found the vermouth a bit overpowering. Tom, however, thought it tasted overly sweet. So, to each their own. This month’s special ingredient is pineapple juice. I added this because of the pineapple rugelach that they eat and talk about many times in the novel. I love pineapple juice, so I liked this addition. But again, it may make the drink too sweet for some people, so keep that in mind. I also changed the garnish from maraschino cherries to an orange wheel because I honestly couldn’t be bothered to find the nice maraschino cherries and felt the orange wheel would look nice regardless.
Overall, this was a decent drink but not in my favourites of the year. If you’re interested in trying my favourite drinks of the year, check out the recipes for the Family Pearl, the Holland/Haunted House, the Silent Seven, and the Daisy. My top drink is tied for the Silent Seven and the Daisy, so definitely give those ones a try!
Three Holidays and a Wedding Synopsis
(from book cover)
Three times the holiday magic. Three times the chaos.
As strangers and seatmates Maryam Aziz and Anna Gibson fly to Toronto over the holidays—Maryam to her sister’s impromptu wedding, and Anna to meet her boyfriend’s wealthy family for the first time—neither expect that severe turbulence will scare them into confessing their deepest hopes and fears to one another. At least they’ll never see each other again. And the love of Maryam’s life, Saif, wasn’t sitting two rows behind them hearing it all. Oops.
An emergency landing finds Anna, Saif, Maryam, and her sister’s entire bridal party snowbound at the quirky Snow Falls Inn in a picture-perfect town, where fate has Anna’s actor-crush filming a holiday romance. As Maryam finds the courage to open her heart to Saif, and Anna feels the magic of being snowbound with an unexpected new love—both women soon realize there’s no place they’d rather be for the holidays.
Review
“A little help is worth more than a lot of sympathy.”
Here we are, the final review of the year! And I’ll start off by saying I liked this book. Three Holidays and a Wedding had all the Hallmark-y Holiday romcom feels you could ask for. Plus, it didn’t just deal with Christmas. This novel also dives into Hanukkah and Ramadan. Which I honestly didn’t know a ton about prior to this novel. Was it a perfect story? No. But it’s set in Canada and written by two Canadian authors, so how could you go wrong?
Let’s start with the positives. I really enjoyed the diversity in Three Holidays and a Wedding and learning about other cultures. I also appreciated that the authors are members of the communities they wrote about, so it felt more authentic and natural. The way they wrote about culture and the language they used was also a nice change of pace. But it did get a tad too explanative with how often they described words they were using. On one hand, I appreciated not having to google translations but on the other hand, it brought me out of the story to keep being told what things meant. Largely, I enjoyed this informative style of reading, but I would’ve liked to be more immersed in the story.
Next, I loved the characters. They were each relatable in their own way and were essentially what you expect from a holiday romcom. However, I found that they weren’t just the cut-and-paste caricature that can often be found in these styles of movies and novels. Instead, I thought they were fully fleshed out, relatable, genuine, and interesting. Maryam, while Muslim and not Sikh, did also remind me of my best friend and I couldn’t help but smile at some things she did and said that seemed like things my friend has said to me exactly. There were a lot of side characters, but I didn’t have any problems keeping them all filed away in my head as I found that even they were unique enough to not blend into each other.
And while the story is obviously quite predictable given that we all know how holiday romcoms tend to play out, I still thought it was cute and romantic. I also liked that it wasn’t an overly spicy romance. I know that that’s a negative for a lot of people, but I am apparently a big prude when it comes to reading spicy novels, so that was a win for me. And as mentioned above, I loved that the novel took place in Canada! And while a small town in Ottawa being a diverse melting pot that throws multi-holiday pageants and is a movie set seems unbelievable, I feel like it’s kind of not. Canada weirdly is like that to an extent, and I think an overly exaggerated holiday town is really a staple in holiday romances anyway, so I’m not complaining.
But unfortunately, we are onto the negatives now. While the story was cute and fun, I did find a few errors with the continuity and timeline. I mean they created and built a Hollywood level set for a small-town holiday pageant in like a day? I could’ve bought in to a week, but a day? No. There were also a couple of plot holes that don’t really matter but did irk me. For instance, Anna’s stress about getting fired when her phone dies but then once she has service again never mentioning any messages from her boss or any updates on that? I know it doesn’t really matter to the plot, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Speaking of phones, I was torn about the setting of the novel. While in a lot of ways it did accurately represent 2000, I still felt like it didn’t fully work. I didn’t get my first cellphone until 2008 (granted I was a child but still), and most people I know didn’t have cellphones in 2000. And yes, many of the characters didn’t have cellphones, but enough did that I thought it was weird. Beyond that, I think a lot of the 2000 references worked and in many other ways it absolutely did give off that 2000 vibe. But unfortunately, there were enough things that brought me out of the story in this regard that I wanted to note it.
Overall, Three Holidays and a Wedding was a cute holiday story that shared a nice message and taught me a little bit about other cultures. It was cute, romantic, funny, and heartwarming. But it wasn’t perfect. Regardless, I liked it and it had exactly the kind of warm holiday vibes I wanted from this story. Quick sidenote before the end, the novel just briefly mentioned cocktail glasses with fairy tales on them and I would die to find something like that because they sound adorable and very me. So, if anyone needs future Christmas present ideas for me there you go! Anyway, if you’re looking for a sweet holiday read, I recommend trying this one out. And if you’re looking for a mildly fancy and decently tasty drink, try the Wedding Bells.
And because I did it for the cocktails, I’ll quickly add here my favourite books I read for the blog this year! In first place, Finlay Donovan is Killing It. Up next, Everyone In My Family has Killed Someone. Tied for third, we have Sea of Tranquility and Daisy Jones and the Six. And two bonus books that I really enjoyed but didn’t make top three are Happy Place and Yellowface. Highly recommend checking any of these out for your next read!
My Rating:
Thanks for reading! And, if you read the book or try the cocktail let me know in a comment or on Instagram. Also, if you haven’t yet read my previous reviews, I recommend reading Happy Place, The Christmas Wish, and The Invisible Husband of Frick Island if you liked this one!
Teghann
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