Juniper’s Christmas fills the holiday book void you didn’t know existed

I’m wary of a potentially smaltzy book that my wife abandons. When we received Juniper’s Christmas by Eoin Colfer my wife read it for two nights and then put it aside, and not because she’s finished it. Normally she’s a sucker for any novel that exudes happiness or romantic retribution, and this book looks like it fits that bill, so I asked her what was up. She said something along the lines of “I just wasn’t feeling it”, and anybody knows that when your wife gives you a short answer like that to a potentially long question, you’re thankful and just move on. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I have COVID, or the flu, or some otherwise cursed virus that makes your body feel as if it’s been hit by a truck driven by a teenager who is busy watching TikTok, instead of commanding the three-ton vehicle that’s about to hit your torso. Juniper’s Christmas is delivered to the basement where I was thankful to read anything beyond the packaging for the cold medicine that I was taking, and lo and behold, what a surprising novel that is ready for its cinematic close-up.

Perhaps it was the dearth of entertaining Christmas movies this past year on any streaming service. My wife and I searched high and low for anything entertaining, Christmas and new on the three streaming services that we subscribe to, and there was nothing. The worst Christmas offering that we endured was that movie on Disney+ that starred Ludacris that would’ve been equally at home, and more entertaining on Mystery Science 3000.

I was secretly pent up for a good Christmas story, and I bet that I wasn’t alone. Juniper’s Christmas feels like it’s already been filmed for Netflix. The story is just contrived enough to make you roll your eyes as you feign disbelief. You secretly don’t want to know what’s going to happen, even though you know that everything in the end will turn out fine for the characters. There will hopefully be enough twists in this Christmas tale to make the story engaging, but not so serpentine that any reindeer get killed or children get hurt.

And boy does Juniper’s Christmas knock the mglit, Christmas story Venn Diagram out of the park. It’s just predictable enough to be familiar but has a crunchy dark underside that feels at home with Cruella Da Ville. There’s a greedy land developer, a cute tween girl and her hipster grandmother, a mystical mountain town and a town that needs to believe in the spirit of Christmas but doesn’t.

The tween girl’s mother has disappeared, which is very unlike her, and the world exists in a place where Santa Claus is real, but hasn’t made an appearance in nine years. Niko is a large, burley man who does some very kind things for strangers, lives in an unusually cold patch of the forest and stays to himself. The legend of Santa Claus is that if he doesn’t appear for ten years then the magic is forever gone and the magic sack, flying reindeer and elves who are looking for him will all disappear.

When Juniper’s mother goes missing, she seeks out Niko’s help. It’s here when she stumbles onto the fact that he’s Santa Claus, but you already knew that didn’t you? The mildly flawed villain who redeems themselves towards the end of the book is something that you might suspect also. Juniper’s Christmas is a charming book that delivers the holiday feels with enough action and legitimate intrigue to engage those readers who think that they know better.

It’s watching Juniper trying to charm the crusty, semi-retired Santa out of his funk so that the spirit of Christmas can be strong again. It’s the young, optimistic police officer dutifully chasing down every loose end while the almost-retired cop kicks down the door while trying to solve that final case. Older readers will recognize the tropes, but this book isn’t for you, is it?

It’s the enjoyment of seeing The Christmas Chronicles for the first time and realizing that Snake Pliskin makes a very charismatic Santa Claus. Juniper’s Christmas has that same vibe. It’s a well-paced, mglit book that brims with Christmas spirit and is begging to be made into a movie. When that happens it could be a case where the book is much better than the film, or it could have that Jack Burton magic that translates into a holiday must-see film, so long as a certain silver fox portrays the big guy.

Juniper’s Christmas is by #1 New York Times-Bestselling Author Eoin Colfer and is available on Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing.

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