Just Like Magic

Just Like Magic by Sarah Hogle is a standalone Contemporary Romance published in October 2022 - a chaotic, warm-hearted holiday rom-com that sits somewhere between wishful fantasy and sharp social comedy. Bettie Hughes was once the picture of effortless glamour: designer handbags, an enviable presence online, a lifestyle that looked flawless from the outside. The reality, by the time the story opens, is rather different. She's broke, squatting in a dead woman's Colorado apartment, and desperately hiding the full scale of her collapse from the ultra-competitive, high-achieving family she's about to spend Christmas with.

Then, in a spectacularly chaotic turn of events, a drunken evening and a backwards-playing vinyl record summon Hall - short for Hall E. Day - the Holiday Spirit, manifested as an earnest, chestnut-haired, Christmas-sweater-wearing man who radiates sincerity in every direction. He's there, according to the rules of his particular magic, to grant Bettie wishes until she finds her own holiday spirit. She, naturally, sees a more immediate opportunity: a ready-made fake fiancé to present to her family over Christmas. The Fake Dating premise is played with gleeful commitment, complicated by the fact that Hall can perform real magic - and that his magic comes with its own set of regulations Bettie is extremely motivated to push against. Their dynamic is a textbook Grumpy-Sunshine Dynamic in reverse: she's the cynic, he's the one who makes mistletoe appear by accident when he's feeling something he hasn't quite named yet.

Beneath the absurdist comedy - and the comedy is genuinely absurd, involving water buffaloes, ruined taste buds, and marshmallow goo - the novel carries real emotional weight. Bettie is a protagonist shaped by Emotional Trauma, haunted by a gaslighting ex who weaponised his platform against her and left her reputation in pieces. Her journey toward something like Personal Growth is bumpy and uncomfortable in all the right ways. Hogle doesn't let her off the hook easily, but she also never stops making space for the tenderness underneath all that self-sabotage. Watching Hall experience the world with complete wonder while Bettie slowly, reluctantly begins to see her family - and herself - through his eyes gives the Slow-burn Romance its particular texture. The Found Family element runs quietly through the whole novel, gaining weight as the Christmas gathering unfolds.

Hogle writes in a style that makes it almost impossible to stay at a remove from her protagonists. The humour is sharp and frequently surreal, while the emotional beats land harder than the setup suggests they should. There are Witty Banter & Sharp Dialogue in abundance, but the book earns its tears as reliably as its laughs. It's the kind of novel where the concept sounds utterly ridiculous - and is, and that's entirely the point. The comedy and the heartache coexist without either undermining the other, which is a harder trick to pull off than Hogle makes it look.

Named one of the best books and best holiday romances of 2022 by multiple publications, Just Like Magic works especially well for readers who want their festive romance to surprise them. The Deception at the heart of the fake-engagement plot keeps building pressure across the family Christmas setting, and the question of what happens when Hall's time on earth runs out gives the Love & Mortality stakes genuine bite. This isn't a book that coasts on seasonal warmth alone - it earns it.