Take a Look at the Five and Ten

This is archetypal Connie Willis: light science fiction, adorable rom-com between people you want to root for, department stores, Christmas, historical fiction and miscommunications. Honestly, it reads a little like “we forced an artificial intelligence to read the entire oeuvre of Connie Willis and then it wrote this” – it bears a striking resemblance to parts of Time Out as well as Bellwether. But I'll still read everything Connie Willis writes: it's adorable, funny and wholesome.

By the way, yes, I was annoyed to pay $30 for a 115 page novella, but the book is a gorgeous slip of a thing with embossed inner covers and a color illustration on photo paper, so I'm pretty sure I'll get over it.