Much Ado About Mistletoe

Fair Verona celebrates the most joyful Christmas season in all of this flat earth, and for spirited 20-year-old Rosie Montague, sleuth and daughter of Romeo and Juliet (alive and well and still passionately in love), the season holds a thrilling new kind of mystery . . .

My famously optimistic and romantic mother, Lady Juliet, has declared, "I'm determined the Montagues and all of Verona shall experience a peaceful start to this holy Christmastime!"

Mamma . . . what were you thinking? Why would you so challenge the Fates?

This season already promises to be especially eventful because Prince Escalus the younger is to be married. To me, Lady Rosaline.

Now a P.R. visit to Verona's market with Prince Escalus is dampened by a fortune teller's dire prophecy, a blaze in Verona's orphanage forces Verona's tempestuous citizens to unite to save their city from ruin, and I discover more about Escalus, his secret kindnesses and his many masks.

And much to my discomfort, I also make discoveries about myself, and realize that Mamma's resolve may indeed be exactly what we need to create a joyous Montague family Christmas.