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Come Home for Christmas Cowboy

by Megan Crane
November 15, 2014 · Tule Publishing Group

RomanceRomantic Suspense

I don’t typically read Christmas books. I’ve spent enough years in retail and shipping to stamp out most of the joy of the holiday season. When I hear “Santa Baby” come on the radio my eye starts twitching and I’m treated to flashbacks of working Black Friday.

I liked the idea of Come Home for Christmas, Cowboy, though, because it features a married couple trying to navigate a difficult patch in their relationship. I’ve always like contemporaries and historicals where the hero and heroine are already married and trying to make it work. I blame To Wed a Stranger by Edith Layton ( A | BN | K | ARe | iB ).

Anyway, Come Home for Christmas, Cowboy by Megan Crane is light on holiday cheer and heavy on relationship angst. I enjoyed most of the book, but felt that the resolution came too quickly and that Dare and Christina’s problems weren’t adequately solved by the end. It read a little more like Happy For Now than Happily Ever After.

The book opens with Christina celebrating her 30th birthday with her husband, Dare, and reflecting on where her life went wrong. She’s living in Denver, working a job she doesn’t like, supporting Dare while he finishes his PhD, and feeling abandoned by him:

Which was how Christina knew, finally, that this had to stop. That she had to let go before there was nothing left of her. Before she really was nothing more than a perky Facebook update surrounded by smiley faces, and utterly empty within.

She was done contorting herself to please a man who couldn’t be pleased–who didn’t want to be pleased. Not by her anyway. It didn’t matter how much weight she lost of gained, how often she went to Pilates class or baked him coffee cake she’d then eat herself, or how scrupulously neat and clean she kept the ugly little rental house he avoided like the plague. It didn’t matter how often she cooked his favorite meals, how cheerfully she spoke to him, or how carefully she made sure to avoid any kind of fight or disagreement or intensity of any kind.

As if it could get any worse. As if this wasn’t bad enough.

Christina had made herself into a walking, talking pretzel for this man, and to what end? He lounged there, that dark and haunted look on his face, his eyes smoky and far-away, as if being with her was like a jail sentence he had to endure.

Dare has slowly been pushing Christina away throughout the course of their marriage, and she’s finally done with it. The following day she packs up her car and heads to her parents house in Montana, leaving Dare a note.

Dare has his reasons for pushing Christina away. He had a really shitty childhood. A really shitty childhood, and he’s got emotional scars that make sense. Dare has always blamed himself for the Terrible Bad Thing that happened to his family, and he’s convinced that he’s going to poison Christina as well. He was swept up by his Feels for her and fell in love and got married, and now he’s freaking the fuck out.

Every time Dare acts distant or cold or pushes Christina away, she adopts this overly-perky, happy facade to keep things “okay,” which is so forced and brittle that it just reinforces Dare’s belief that he’s making her miserable.

So when he gets home and sees the note stating she left, you’d think that he’d be relieved, considering that he’s been trying to sabotage his own marriage, or maybe just resigned? Instead Dare races to Montana to be with Christina and win her back. Now the two of them are at her family’s over-the-top Christmas celebration trying to pretend they aren’t coming apart at the seams.

This was the big issue I had with the book. Dare has spent years slowly dismantling his marriage, then suddenly runs to Christina’s side because he can’t lose her. While he’s there he goes back to being cold and distant and generally miserable because he’s convinced that he’s no good for her. It gave me whiplash.

I guess I can’t expect a person burdened with that level of emotional angst to behave rationally, but I was never really sure what the hell was going on in Dare’s head. He loves Christina but he’s bad for her so he’s going to waffle around and moan and bang his head on things. And say shit like:

“Some people are predisposed to darkness,” Dare managed to say past that pressure in his throat. “They infect everything they touch.”

Chill out, Healthcliff.

One thing I really liked was that while Dare’s family was the epitome of dysfunction, Christina’s wasn’t the perfect, syrupy, Christmas-loving family that solved everything. This isn’t a Hallmark movie. Her family is normal. They throw a big holiday celebration, but it isn’t sugar coated and covered in LED lights. For example, they have a Mean Grandma who scares the shit out of everyone and is super passive aggressive. Christina’s sister is getting a divorce and her kids are tearing the house apart. It’s pretty typical holiday-induced stress.

A crumbling marriage plus holiday chaos puts Christina and Dare in a pressure cooker. They can’t keep their hands off each other, but they also can’t articulate how they feel. When they do finally talk it out, it felt rushed to me. Given the severity of Dare’s emotional issues, I thought that he needed a lot more help and growth to reach a place where I believed his marriage to Christina was on solid footing.

Overall, the story deserved a much longer book, but I did find it a nice departure from schmaltzy holiday stories.