The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox

A special thank you to Edelweiss and G.P. Putnam's Sons for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

All they want for Christmas is a different life.

When chef Charlie Goodwin gets hit on the head on the L.A. set of her reality baking show, she loses a lot more than consciousness; she also loses her ability to taste and smell--both of which are critical to her success as one of the show's judges. Meanwhile, Charlie's identical twin, Cass, is frantically trying to hold her own life together back in their quaint mountain hometown while running the family's bustling bakery and dealing with her ex, who won't get the memo that they're over.

With only days until Christmas, a desperate Charlie asks Cass to do something they haven't done since they were kids: switch places. Looking for her own escape from reality, Cass agrees. But temporarily trading lives proves more complicated than they imagined, especially when rugged firefighter Jake Greenman and gorgeous physician's assistant Miguel Rodriguez are thrown into the mix. Will the twins' identity swap be a recipe for disaster, or does it have all the right ingredients for getting their lives back on track?

The Holiday Swap is the first offering from Maggie Knox which is the powerhouse duo of Karma Brown and Marissa Stapley. Perfectly paced for a holiday read, it strikes the right balance between banter and charm. With a dusting of decadent baking and themes of sisterhood and empowerment, this book is a gift (and perfect for gift-giving). 

Complimented by two festive romances and a delightful small-town setting that's like living in a snow globe, The Holiday Swap is the quintessential seasonal rom-com to give you all the Christmas feels. 

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

KARMA BROWN is an award-winning journalist and author of the bestsellers Come Away With Me, The Choices We Make, In This Moment, The Life Lucy Knew, and Recipe for a Perfect Wife. Her first non-fiction book, The 4% Fix, published in 2020. Karma's writing has appeared in publications such as Redbook, SELF, and Chatelaine. 

Brown lives just outside Toronto, Canada with her husband, daughter, and their adorably handsome labradoodle, Fred.

MARISSA STAPLEY is a journalist and the bestselling author of Mating for Life, Things to Do When It's Raining, The Last Resort and Lucky which has been optioned for television. 

Stapley lives in Toronto with her family. 

---

Q & A with Maggie Knox*

GWR: How did the partnership come about?

MK: Back in November 2019 we were both at different stages in our publishing schedules—Karma was hard at work on the publicity for Recipe for a Perfect Wife and Marissa was deep into  edits for Lucky. On the phone or by text we would share when we hit a pitfall in our respective processes. Until one of us quipped: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could just swap places whenever we felt like it?” 


This conversation quickly morphed from a bit of a joke to something more serious—but still very fun! What would it be like to work as a team? And, what would it be like to write a twin swap, one of the tropes we consider the most fun (Parent Trap, anyone?). It went from there!

GWR: Is there any significance to the name Maggie Knox?

MK: We wanted to use the initials MK (or KM, it didn’t really matter!) to represent both our names. Maggie is Marissa’s paternal grandmother’s name—her Grannie Maggie was a writer and she thought if using a pen name it would be a nice nod to her heritage to use that name. And the K in Knox is for Karma, of course—but we took a bit of a circuitous route to settling on that name that had a little to do with the needs of our publisher, as well as how we wanted the name to sound and look. 

GWR: What sparked the idea for The Holiday Swap?

MK: As we mentioned above, the idea came about when we were joking around about writing something fun together. We had a great time going back and forth about the most charming, feel-good, festive, Hallmark movie-esque novel we could think of writing, something that would make us feel so happy to write. And the next thing we knew, we were writing it! We are similarly ambitious and driven when it comes to our writing careers, so once we got going, there was really no stopping us. We got our agents on board right away, and just went for it. 

GWR: Writing a rom-com is a bit of a departure for both of you. Were you inspired by any other rom-com or holiday romance books/authors?  

MK: Absolutely. We both love losing ourselves in a light, romantic and joyful holiday romance story during the holiday season, whether its relaxing with a novel after a long day of shopping, or watching holiday rom coms on television while wrapping presents. We were definitely inspired by our enjoyment of novels by Josie Silver, Mary Kay Andrews, Karen Swan, Karen Schaler and by moves like The Holiday, Let It Snow, and basically anything on the Hallmark Channel! 

GWR: Tell us about the writing process—with two main characters, did you each tackle one? 

MK: We decided we each needed to have an equal investment in the twins’ storylines—and also that one of the benefits of working with a partner was being able to trade off when the going got tough. That meant we did not each take on one twin but instead wrote a very detailed outline and then divided up the chapters and spent an equal amount of time with each twin, in each setting. This really worked for The Holiday Swap, and meant the writing was seamless. It also means when our friends and loved ones read the novel, they have a hard time figuring out who wrote which chapter. Sometimes we can’t even remember! 

GWR: Let’s talk about the food! Are any of Charlie and Cass’ recipes inspired by your own holiday baking? Do either of you have a family recipe that could rival Starlight Bread? 

MK: Marissa got really into baking sourdough bread during the pandemic, while Karma watched, mystified (how often are you supposed to feed a starter?) from the sidelines, so that’s why there is so much sourdough in the book. It was partly Marissa trying to explain to Karma exactly how it all worked. And both our grandmothers had a Christmas cake they always made that inspired the flavours of the Starlight Bread. 

GWR: What did you have the most fun with, character development or plot? 

MK: We both like different aspects of the writing process best: Marissa loves writing early drafts and having fun getting to know the characters, while Karma enjoys the editing and fine-tuning stage of things. While we both enjoyed the plot and character of this book, Marissa probably enjoyed the outlining and drafting and figuring out all the fun twists and turns, while Karma enjoyed digging in and layering in our edits and little details that made the twins feel like real people. 

GWR: If your book was a beverage, what would it be?

MK: An Aperol Spritz! Light, fizzy, bright, and festive! 

GWR: What’s next for Maggie Knox?

MK: We’ve got our second holiday rom com, All I Want for Christmas, coming out next fall. Right now we’re in the editing phase (meaning Karma is happy and Marissa is missing the writing stage!). This novel is like The Hating Game meets the show Nashville and we love it! It’s a festive and sexy enemies to lovers story about singer/songwriters Sadie Hunter and Max Brody, who are paired up to sing a duet while competing in a Nashville-set reality singing competition show. Sparks fly when they perform together, so much so that everyone thinks they must be in love—and the world falls for the idea of them as a couple. (They even get a hashtag: #Saxie). But in truth, they can hardly stand each other. In the interests of launching their careers and winning the competition they agree to pose as a couple for one year, but as Christmas—and the deadline for the dissolution of their fake relationship—approaches and they come together to write an original holiday love song, they start to realize that their intense feelings might be very real…

*A version of this post was published on STYLE Canada.

The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom

A special thank you to Harper for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

What would happen if we called on God for help and God actually appeared? In Mitch Albom’s profound new novel of hope and faith, a group of shipwrecked passengers pull a strange man from the sea. He claims to be “the Lord.” And he says he can only save them if they all believe in him.

Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, nine people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves. They pull him in.

“Thank the Lord we found you,” a passenger says.

“I am the Lord,” the man whispers.

So begins Mitch Albom’s most beguiling and inspiring novel yet.

Albom has written of heaven in the celebrated number one bestsellers The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The First Phone Call from Heaven. Now, for the first time in his fiction, he ponders what we would do if, after crying out for divine help, God actually appeared before us? What might the Lord look, sound and act like?

In The Stranger in the Lifeboat, Albom keeps us guessing until the end: Is this strange and quiet man really who he claims to be? What actually happened to cause the explosion? Are the survivors already in heaven, or are they in hell?

The story is narrated by Benji, one of the passengers, who recounts the events in a notebook that is later discovered—a year later—when the empty life raft washes up on the island of Montserrat.

It falls to the island’s chief inspector, Jarty LeFleur, a man battling his own demons, to solve the mystery of what really happened. 

A fast-paced, compelling novel that makes you ponder your deepest beliefs, The Stranger in the Lifeboat suggests that answers to our prayers may be found where we least expect them. 

Albom's words are simple, yet powerful and are always thought provoking and emotional. I like to think that you leave a Mitch Albom novel a better person than when you started. 

Tuesdays With Morrie is probably one of the greatest books I have ever read. As a love song to life's teachers, it has stuck with me over the years. But the problem with Tuesdays With Morrie is that it is the pinnacle of Albom's books and is the yardstick that his other works get measured against.

That being said, even without the lens of Tuesdays With Morrie, I'm not the target audience for this book—there are many whose faith is an integral part of their life and they would get more from this book than I did.

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

MITCH ALBOM is an internationally renowned and best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician. His books have collectively sold more than 40 million copies worldwide; have been published in 49 territories and in 47 languages around the world; and have been made into Emmy Award-winning and critically-acclaimed television movies.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

A special thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic and chilli peppers, creeping honeysuckle, and in the centre, growing through a cavity in the roof, a fig tree. The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings; their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there, too, when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns - a botanist, looking for native species - looking, really, for Defne. The two lovers return to the taverna to take a clipping from the fig tree and smuggle it into their suitcase, bound for London. Years later, the fig tree in the garden is their daughter Ada's only knowledge of a home she has never visited, as she seeks to untangle years of secrets and silence, and find her place in the world.

Shafak's The Island of Missing Trees moves back and forth in both time and place, and is split into three narratives: 2010s London, 1974s Cyprus, and the fig tree. The use of a tree will polarize readers—some will love its beautiful passages and others will be detached. But one thing is for certain, the writing is transcendent and stunning. Shafak's passages are vivid with detail and sweeping prose.  

The characters are complex and rich with detail and the supporting cast is just as strong—especially Aunt Meryem. With a story that is permeated with pathos, she is dynamic and refreshing. And although they are decades apart, Aunt Meryem mirrors teenage Ada and their relationship blossoms much to Ada's chagrin. 

The Island of Missing Trees is beautifully written and mesmerizing. With branches of grief, love, faith, nature, and home, it’s only fitting that one of its narrators is a fig tree. 

BUY NOW

ELIF SHAFAK is an award-winning British-Turkish novelist. She has published 19 books, 12 of which are novels, including her latest The Island of Missing Trees. She is a bestselling author in many countries around the world and her work has been translated into 55 languages. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize; and was Blackwell’s Book of the Year. The Forty Rules of Love was chosen by BBC among the 100 Novels that Shaped Our World. The Architect's Apprentice was chosen for the Duchess of Cornwall's inaugural book club, The Reading Room. 

Shafak holds a PhD in political science and she has taught at various universities in Turkey, the US and the UK, including St Anne's College, Oxford University, where she is an honorary fellow. She also holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bard College.

An advocate for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice TED Global speaker. 

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman

A special thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada and Edelweiss for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Owens family has been cursed in matters of love for over three-hundred years but all of that is about to change. The novel begins in a library, the best place for a story to be conjured, when beloved aunt Jet Owens hears the deathwatch beetle and knows she has only seven days to live. Jet is not the only one in danger—the curse is already at work.

A frantic attempt to save a young man’s life spurs three generations of the Owens women, and one long-lost brother, to use their unusual gifts to break the curse as they travel from Paris to London to the English countryside where their ancestor Maria Owens first practiced the Unnamed Art. The younger generation discovers secrets that have been hidden from them in matters of both magic and love by Sally, their fiercely protective mother. As Kylie Owens uncovers the truth about who she is and what her own dark powers are, her aunt Franny comes to understand that she is ready to sacrifice everything for her family, and Sally Owens realizes that she is willing to give up everything for love.

Master storyteller Alice Hoffman revisits the Owens family in her spellbinding conclusion to the Practical Magic series. Hoffman's writing is bewitching and unforgettable, as are her characters—they are vivid, incredibly crafted, and fully fleshed out. 

Magical. Beautiful. Mesmerizing. Steeped in the history of witchcraft, The Book of Magic is a stunning celebration of mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, and anyone who has ever been in love. 

Complete with magical recipes, conflict, and witchcraft, this gift of a novel can be read as a standalone, but you will want to devour all of the books in the series. Hoffman is at her finest and you will be under her spell. 

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

ALICE HOFFMAN has a BA from Adelphi University and an MA in creative writing from Stanford University.

Hoffman's first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published over thirty novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults.

Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Hoffman’s advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.

Hoffman has written a number of novels for young adults, including Aquamarine, Green Angel, and the New York Times bestseller The Ice Queen. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year.

Her works have been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Hoffman's novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay “Independence Day,” a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.

She currently lives in Boston and New York. 

Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger

A special thank you to HarperCollins Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

Think twice before you swipe.

Intrigued by his picture on a dating app—a dark handsome stranger—they go on a date at a downtown bar. Wren thought it was just going to be another hookup, but it quickly becomes so much more. With their powerful connection, she is falling for him hard. Is it love?

But then he stands her up and disappears—profiles deleted, phone disconnected. Adam ghosts her.

Maybe it was her fault. Did she shared too much, too fast? But then Wren learns that there were others before her. Girls who also thought that they were in love only these girls went missing. She had been looking for a connection, but now she's looking for answers. Chasing a digital trail into his dark past—and hers—Wren finds herself on a dangerous hunt. And she's not sure whether she's the predator—or the prey.

In this online dating match turned deadly cat-and-mouse game, Unger delivers a captivating thriller of secrets, obsession, and vengeance.  

Wren is a complex and engaging character who is harbouring secrets of her own. Last Girl Ghosted is written in first-person narration and utilizes dual timelines to flesh out the story. Also lurking in the background, and just as unsettling as the plot, is the pandemic. The only negative in this riveting thriller is the length—there are times where the narrative is repetitious and it creates unnecessary bulk.   

With perfectly crafted characters and just enough plot twists, that are both believable and propulsive, Last Girl Ghosted is utterly captivating.   

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

LISA UNGER is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author. Her books have been published in thirty languages, sold millions of copies worldwide, and have been featured on “Best Book” lists from the Today show, Good Morning America, Entertainment Weekly, People, Amazon, Goodreads, and many others. 

Unger lives on the west coast of Florida with her family.

Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis

A special thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

On her way home from her college reunion, 30-something Noelle Butterby is stranded on a highway in a blizzard. She's alone and is without food, drink, or a working charger for her phone. Everything seems hopeless that is until Sam Attwood, a handsome American stranger also trapped in a nearby car, knocks on her window and offers assistance. What follows is eight perfect hours together. 

Parting ways, the two strangers think they'll never never see each other again. But it seems that fate has more in store for them. As the two keep serendipitously bumping into one another, they begin to realize that perhaps there truly is no such thing as coincidence. 

Eight Perfect Hours is a fated love story that with its weightier topics of loss, grief, and mental health transcends the romance genre and becomes more of a contemporary offering.

Louis' writing is witty yet tender. She truly has an ear for dialogue and imbues the narrative with feeling and charm. This serendipitous love story has a strong and vibrant cast—Noelle and Sam's chemistry is palpable and has incredible emotional depth. 

The fated lovers trope works exceptionally well as do the subplots with Noelle's mum, brother, best friends, and father. Louis fully fleshes out her characters and readers will be just as vested with the supporting cast as with the main players. It is a slow-burn romance that gains momentum as the story goes on. 

Beautifully written, Eight Perfect Hours will make you believe in the power of fate.

BUY NOW

LISTEN NOW

LIA LOUIS was the 2015 winner of Elle magazine’s annual writing competition and has been a contributor for a blog for aspiring writers. She previously worked as a freelance copywriter and proofreader and is the author of Somewhere Close to Happy and Dear Emmie Blue.

Louis lives in the United Kingdom with her partner and three young children.