Book Review: Three Holidays and a Wedding by Uzma Jalaluddin and Marissa Stapley

Title: Three Holidays and a Wedding
Author: Uzma Jalaluddin and Marissa Stapley
Publisher: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication date: September 23, 2023
Length: 384 pages
Genre: Contemporary romance
Source: Purchased
Rating:

Three times the holiday magic. Three times the chaos.

As strangers and seatmates Maryam Aziz and Anna Gibson fly to Toronto over the holidays—Maryam to her sister’s impromptu wedding, and Anna to meet her boyfriend’s wealthy family for the first time—neither expect that severe turbulence will scare them into confessing their deepest hopes and fears to one another. At least they’ll never see each other again. And the love of Maryam’s life, Saif, wasn’t sitting two rows behind them hearing it all. Oops.

An emergency landing finds Anna, Saif, Maryam, and her sister’s entire bridal party snowbound at the quirky Snow Falls Inn in a picture-perfect town, where fate has Anna’s actor-crush filming a holiday romance. As Maryam finds the courage to open her heart to Saif, and Anna feels the magic of being snowbound with an unexpected new love—both women soon realize there’s no place they’d rather be for the holidays.

Three Holidays and a Wedding is a light, upbeat holiday read that weaves Christmas, Hanukkah, and Ramadan celebrations together into a sweet romance-filled story.

Anna is headed to Toronto to meet her boyfriend’s ultra-wealthy family for the first time, but with some nervousness. Everything has to be perfect, everything is planned to the last detail… but after only six months of a relationship, Anna isn’t ready for the engagement ring she finds in his suitcase, especially since she’s been careful to hide all the non-perfect pieces of herself away from him.

Maryam is shepherding her needy family to Toronto for her younger sister Saima’s last-minute wedding, which fell to responsible Maryam to plan. After an earlier heartbreak, Maryam has resigned herself to the box her family has put her in, always being the dutiful daughter, but she has regrets and frustrations none the less.

Seated together, Anna and Maryam initially just annoy each other on the plane, but when they hit terrifying turbulence during a blizzard, they support one another and share their deepest fears, hopes, and secrets. But Maryam’s secret crush Saif is seated just behind them and hears it all, and once they discover that the plane has been diverted to the tiny town of Snow Falls, they realize that they’ll all be stuck together for at least several days.

With Christmas, Hanukkah, and Ramadan all overlapping within the coming days, as well as wedding plans that look likely to be cancelled and pressure from Anna’s boyfriend (who seems to blame her for not making it to Toronto as planned), this could be an awful, stressful experience. And yet, once the stranded passengers settle into the local inn and start seeing what Snow Falls has to offer, this nightmarish travel interruption soon turns into a lovely retreat from the rest of the world.

Snow Falls is an idyllic small town that welcomes strangers and offers cultural and religious diversity, with everything anyone could need to celebrate the holiday of their choice, from a mosque to halal food to rugelach and a Christmas pageant. The townspeople open their doors and their hearts to the new arrivals, and everyone gets caught up in the town’s holiday preparations while waiting for the blizzard to end.

Three Holidays and a Wedding is really quite sweet, and much of the plot is driven by the friendship between Anna and Maryam. The two women are from completely different backgrounds, but are able to connect as they share their hopes and dreams, as well as their sadness and past disappointments. They each get a love story, and each love story is nice (the men are quite dreamy and special), but I found the friendship and family angles of the story to be the most engaging and moving.

I enjoyed the way the authors incorporate the traditions of different religions into the story. It never feels like the reader is being talked down to or that the authors are deliberately trying to educate — instead, we simply see how the various characters go about observing their rituals and practices in their daily lives. I learned about Ramadan experiences that I wasn’t familiar with, and appreciated seeing the Hanukkah and Christmas traditions so well represented too.

Of course, the town of Snow Falls seems much too good to be true. I mean, it’s practically perfect in every way. The townspeople are welcoming, they shower the passengers with attention and give them gifts, they welcome them into their town celebrations and even put them in charge of the holiday pageant. It’s all lovely… but definitely feels like the sort of wish fulfillment that only exists in Hallmark movies.

But — we don’t read contemporary romance for gritty reality, do we? Three Holidays and a Wedding is full of good cheer, friendship, and family, as well as two wholesome, healthy love stories. I appreciated the emphasis on Anna and Maryam’s friendship, and how they support one another in facing their own feelings and making changes in how they view their lives.

Overall, this is a warm-hearted book that’s a great fit for this time of year. It’s a fast read, and I had a lot of fun with it. Grab a cozy blanket and fluffy socks, add in a mug of hot cocoa, and enjoy!