The Christmas Clash. Suzanne Park. 2022. 368 pages. [Source: Library]
First sentence: The projectile pacifier grazed my left ear. "I'm so sorry, would you mind grabbing his binky off the floor? Little Timmy's got quite a temper when he's hungry." Important note: Timmy was not in fact very little. I suspected he was five, maybe six.
Premise/plot: Chloe Kwon, our heroine, works as a photographer at the Santa Land feature at her local mall [Riverwood]. Her parents have a restaurant in the mall as well. Peter Li, our hero, works at the virtual reality North Pole experience at the mall. His parents have a restaurant in the mall too. The Kwons hate the Lis; the Lis hate the Kwons. But Chloe and Peter have found out something shocking: they do not in fact hate each other. Rather, Chloe might just like-like Peter, and it's mutual. But this isn't solely a "forbidden" romance with warring families. Riverwood Mall is very likely to be demolished to make way for condos. It isn't just their seasonal side jobs at risk but their whole families livelihood. Can Peter and Chloe by working together form a resistance with other mall tenants and find a way to save the mall????
My thoughts: This would make a PERFECT holiday movie. Everything about this one screams out for a film adaptation. So good news if you like holiday movies, you'll fall for this novel as well. And perhaps it's nice to get it in book-form for a change.
Was it a perfect read? No. I'm not going to lie and say it was perfectly perfect in regards to storytelling, characterization, plotting, etc. But I could visualize much of this one. And it felt like a movie that I'd watch through beginning to end. It might sell better as a movie.
© 2022 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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