“The poor soul had nowhere to sleep last night, and he crawled in my stupid open window!”
In a word: Read the thing.
The Summary: (from Goodreads) Two men. One Christmas Eve that changes the courses of both their lives.
Henry’s homeless and only wants a warm place to sleep on the coldest night of the year. A forgotten open window in a darkened house entices Henry inside with the promise of warmth and comfort. He knows it’s wrong, but he promises himself he’ll be out before the owner wakes on Christmas morning. Except he oversleeps and the homeowner, Jim, discovers a bearded stranger sawing logs under his dining room table. When the shock and the drama that ensues dies down, Henry and Jim discover that they might have found, quite unexpectedly, the Christmas miracle they’d both been longing for—love and home.
[available for purchase from Dreamspinner Press, Amazon.ca, Chapters, and Barnes & Noble; also available as part of the Dreamspinner Press 2017 Advent Calendar set]
- The main part of the story is told through flashback with Jim and Henry looking back on the night they met. That’s really what saves this story, I think, because otherwise it would’ve been ridiculous. It’s around six thousand words long, nowhere near long enough to have the premise of a homeless man breaking into someone’s house and then falling in love with the homeowner play out without being entirely unrealistic. Jim and Henry are in love and happy together 20 years into the future and I’ll buy that, but I won’t buy that they fell in love at first sight considering what happened. I’m happy enough to assume that a lot of build-up happened between then and now.
- And speaking of the situation being unrealistic: it totally is. Jim leaves his window open on a snowy Christmas Eve, and awakes to find a homeless man asleep in his living room. We the readers got a scene from Henry’s POV, so we know he isn’t dangerous, but Jim doesn’t. The fact that Jim doesn’t immediately call the cops strikes me as odd, but it somehow works out in this story. (Though a lot of that feeling might come from the fact that I, as a woman, probably wouldn’t fare well should a strange man break into my home while I’m asleep.)
- Though the reason why Jim isn’t so quick to kick Henry out is that he himself is suffering a bit from the bombshell that his, now, ex-boyfriend dropped on him. Jim was all set to have a perfect Christmas with a man who he thought he could get serious with, only to find out that that man was already married to a woman and had two children. What a dick.
- Henry’s story hurts my heart, and if this weren’t meant to be a fluffy Christmas story it could’ve easily gotten pretty angsty.
- There’s no insta-love in this story, Jim and Henry definitely don’t fall in love right away. This is just a flashback of how they met. I am curious as to what happened after the flashback ended. Jim and Henry in the present seem to be very happy and in love together, but I can’t help but wonder how they made it there.
- Also I’m curious as to what they tell people who ask them how they met.
- And a petty, vindictive part of me really hopes that Jim got back at Barry (the adulterous douchebag ex) somehow.
- Aside from the dialogue being a bit too prose-like for my tastes, I loved the writing in this. I really felt for both Henry and Jim, and the ridiculous situation was somehow made to work. It was sweet in parts, and there was some humour as well. Definitely recommend this one, and I wouldn’t mind reading a longer story about how Jim and Henry actually got together.
[An Open Window was published December 1, 2017, by Dreamspinner Press; it is only available as an ebook]
Advertisements Share this:
