I wince; and not just because of the unfair comparison between me and one of the most beautiful actresses in the world, but because I stillcan’t believe Elliot named the town in his novel after me; as if basing the female love interest on me wasn’t bad enough.
I can’t believe Elliot did a lot of things, though. Putting a fictional version of me — and him — into his book is the very least of my issues with the guy. Giving her a prickly, ‘difficult’ personality that everyone would assume was mine … well, that wasn’t exactlygreat, obviously, but he didn’tknowit would be a bestseller when he wrote it, did he? Or that it would be turned into a movie.
He didn’t know tourists would come flocking to Bramblebury, desperate to see all the landmarks from the story, and hedefinitelydidn’t know that, every year after that, the town council would erect a large plastic ‘snow globe’ in the village square, right next to the equally oversized Christmas tree, so that people could have their photo taken inside it — ideally while standing on tiptoe to kiss their partners through flurries of polystyrene ‘foam’.
No onecould have known that. Especially not anyone who knows me, Holly Hart: 34-year-old book nerd, recently single cat lover, and ‘the exact opposite of hot’, as Levi puts it.
“So,canwe?” demands Levi, from his position next to the coffee machine. “Can we take a photo in the globe?”
I take a deep breath as I try to figure out how to let him down gently.
I have never had my photo taken inside the globe. I hate the stupid globe almost as much as I hate Christmas, cinnamon, and people who think it’s acceptable to ‘pop in’ unexpectedly for a visit, as if they were raised by savages.
Levi, however, has been coming to Bramblebury every year since he was 17, just to pose inside the damn thing, and this year he finally talked us into giving him a job in the bookstore, claiming it was hislifelong dream to work in the town that inspired his favorite book and movie. He’s only 20, so it can’t have beenthatlong a dream, but he was so persistent that Dad ended up buying a coffee machine, so Levi could serve up gingerbread lattes and other sickly sweet drinks to the customers, while also flogging them a range of Christmas candles with names like ‘Jingle Smells’ and ‘Scenta Claus’. (We called it the ‘Coffee Corner’, after a lengthy stand-off with Levi himself, who wanted it to be ‘Koffee Korner’, and would have had his way if Paris hadn’t threatened to resign over it, saying she couldn’t work with people who didn’t respect the English language…)
Levi bats his eyes hopefully. He’s wearing a bright red Christmas jumper with the slogan ‘Jingle My Bells’ on the front, and his bleached blond hair is extra spiky today. He looks like a member of a 90s boy band, who are about to record their upcoming Christmas single, and between him and Paris, with her low key glamour, it's no wonder customers to the shop sometimes don't even notice me hiding in the background.
“I’m not ‘famous’, Levi,” I say instead. “And I’m not a character in a book, either. I’m a real person. I am not Evie Snow. This is not ‘Hollybrooke’. And Elliot Sinclair isn’t—”
I trail off, thinking again about the ‘effective management’ book, and all of that stuff I put in it about keeping your private life separate from your professional life. Which is honestly pretty difficult when you run a bookstore, and the number one Christmas bestseller every year just so happens to be based on a month-long romance you had when you were 24. ‘Boss Babe 101: How to Slay as a Manager’ didn’t cover that particular scenario, though, strangely enough — the client didn’t seem to think it would be relatable to anyone other than me —so it looks like I’m just going to have to figure out how to ‘slay’ on my own here.
“I don’t want to be associated withThe Snow Globe, Levi,” I tell him firmly. “Not on social media, and not in real life either, if I can possibly help it. Okay?”
As if on cue, the shop door swings open, admitting a blast of frosty air and a small gaggle of shoppers, who enter the store to the tinny refrain of ‘Deck the Halls’ from the musical motion sensor Dad installed on the door last year.
Ignoring my carefully curated table of indie authors and new releases, the customers flock to theSnow Globebook display by the window, all cooing in unison over how ‘cute’ the store is, with its squishy velvet sofas arranged around a log fire (a roaring one, naturally), and floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with every kind of book imaginable.
There’s only one book that anyone’s interested in, though.
I brace myself as one of the shoppers approaches me, holding her copy ofThe Snow Globein front of her like a talisman. I know exactly what she’s going to say, and, sure enough…
“It’s you!” says the woman in an American accent. “Sorry,” she goes on, with a self-conscious giggle. “I’ve always wanted to say that in a bookstore. It makes me cry when he says it in the movie.”
I smile weakly, trying to pretend I haven’t heard this a dozen times already today, and approximately a millionty-one times in the decade since the book came out.
“Thisisthe bookstore from the story, isn’t it?” the customer goes on as Paris rings up her purchase and slides it into a bag. “The one where they met?”
I hesitate for just long enough for Levi to come pushing forward, puffed up with importance.
“It sure is,” he says, beaming. “Hart Books is, indeed, The Book Nook inThe Snow Globe. They actually used some exterior shots in the movie. The one where Evie and Luke meet for the first time, and he says that line? That’s the door of our shop you see him walk through. The interiors were all filmed on a soundstage, though.”
The woman gives an excited little squeal, then hands her phone to one of her friends, so she can have her photo taken standing in the doorway in question.
Levi follows them, offering up more tidbits of information about the making of the movie, while I stand there biting my tongue and trying not to scream,that’s not how it happened.
Because it isn’t.
In real life, Elliot and I didn’t meet in the bookstore. In real life, we didn’t do a lot of the things he put into his book.
But books aren’t real life. I should know; I’ve written enough of them for my ghostwriting clients, churning out tens of thousands of words on subjects I know absolutely nothing about (It might surprise you to know this, but I am not, in fact, a ‘Boss Babe’. And I’ve never ‘slayed’ atanything…), but which I somehow manage to convince my readers I’m an expert on.
See?Fake.
It’s all fake; just like the snow on the windows, and the book on the shelf, which claims to tell a true love story, but which actually tells a completely false one.
The one saving grace is that most of the tourists who come here to buy a copy of the book don’t know I’m the girl in the story when theyrepeat that famous “it’s you” line to me (or to Paris, or to Dad, or to whoever happens to be within earshot when they walk in). They don’t know it was my life before it was a book or a movie. They don’t know I’m the real-life ‘Eve Snow’ — and everyone whodoesknow has been sworn to secrecy. (On pain of death, in Levi’s case).
It’s because I’m nothot, obviously, to quote Levi once again.
