Book Review: The Christmas Swap

By Melody Carlson
Revell, 2020
176 pages

Amazon Description: All Emma Daley wants this holiday season is a white Christmas. But the young teacher and struggling musician sure can’t find that in sunny Arizona. Luckily, there’s someone living in a perfect mountain home in the Colorado Rockies looking to make a vacation trade this year.

Tyler Prescott is an in-demand songwriter and talented musician who put his own singing career on hold to write songs for celebrity acts to perform. When his mother convinces him to do a vacation trade for Christmas, he never imagined one of the houseguests would be so sweet–or so strikingly pretty. Naturally, he decides to stick around, and, to get better acquainted, he poses as the house’s caretaker. But when Emma’s friend Gillian discovers his true identity and sets her sights on him, things
get . . . messy.

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Thanks to Revell Reads for sending me a review copy.

Looking for a short, sweet Christmas love story? The Christmas Swap is just what you need! At less than two hundred pages, you can easily read it in a day, or stretch it for more lasting enjoyment. I liked the pacing of Emma and West’s romance and thought the ending was just right for this kind of story. 

The best way I could describe this story is that it’s like an American only version of that Cameron Diaz/Kate Winslet movie The Holiday, where two families switch houses for the holidays. One thing I loved about this book was how well-drawn the setting is. I could easily picture the house, the town, the ski slopes, and it made me long for a white Christmas. I’ve never been skiing before, but now I’m pretty sure I need to give it a try.

And just to give you a heads up, there is at least one intensely unlikable character in this story. We all have that one (or maybe more?) person in our life who is an oblivious drama-monger, and Gillian is certainly that in this book.

All-in-all, I highly recommend The Christmas Swap for your holiday TBR this year.

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