Book Club Night Kit

In a Holidaze

Christina Lauren

Cozy night

A snowed-in holiday romance about a woman who wishes for happiness and gets a chance to redo the same Christmas week in a beloved cabin full of chosen family. It is warm, funny, and tailor-made for a December night under blankets.

Snowed In (On Purpose)

Come be cozy with us for In a Holidaze: soup in mugs, cookies to frost, and cocoa that never runs out. Pajamas strongly encouraged, opinions optional.

Reading level: Easy Pages: 320

Best for: A club that reads for comfort and shows up in slippers to talk about feelings more than footnotes

Discussion

Warm-up

1.If you could be snowed in for a week at any one place from your own life, where would it be, and who would have to be there?
2.What was the first moment in this book where you felt yourself relax into it, like settling into a warm room?

Digging in

1.The Hollis cabin is a place where traditions get repeated every year on purpose. Which of your own repeated traditions comforts you most, even the slightly silly ones?
2.Mae is surrounded by people who are family without being related to her. When has a group like that held you up, and what did it feel like to be let in?
3.This book treats a wish for happiness as a real and reasonable thing to ask for. If you got to make that wish out loud tonight, what would you actually be asking for?
4.So much of the warmth here comes from small sensory things: snow outside, a crowded kitchen, old pajamas. Which of those details stayed with you after you closed the book?

Going deep

1.Getting to live the same days again means getting to be braver in them. Was there a stretch of your own life you would happily walk back through, not to fix it, but just to say the thing you did not say?
2.By the last pages, Mae has changed how she treats her own wanting. Without giving anything away, did the book leave you feeling more hopeful about asking for what you want, or more tender about how hard that is?

On the table & to sip

To eat

Big pot of creamy potato soup with a bread bowl basket

Exactly the thing you eat after coming in from the snow, and it holds all night for latecomers

Decorate-your-own sugar cookies with bowls of icing and sprinkles

A cabin-kitchen Christmas activity that doubles as something to do with your hands while you talk

Pan of warm cinnamon rolls with cream cheese glaze

Pajama-morning food, served at night on purpose, since this is a book about getting a holiday morning over and over

To sip

Slow cooker hot cocoa with whipped cream and crushed candy cane (no alcohol)

The non-alcoholic anchor of the night, and the drink of every snowed-in kitchen

Mulled red wine with orange peel and cinnamon sticks

Smells like the whole house is a cabin, and it needs almost no tending

Spiked eggnog or buttered rum, poured by request

The slightly indulgent grown-up option for a holiday house full of chosen family