Clare Swatman

Last Christmas I gave you my heart...

Looking up at the departures board in Heathrow airport, her flight to New York boarding soon, Bea Preston knows that getting on that plane changes everything. Her life in London has grown stale, her relationship with boyfriend Dom has run its course, and New York has always been her dream. But it’s a risk – she’ll miss her parents, her friends, her job.

What if Bea could live both lives? In one she goes back home for Christmas, and in another she heads to the Big Apple. Would her fate remain the same, or can one decision really change everything? And will Bea get one happy ending - or two...

In a grand sliding-doors love story that spans oceans, years and lives

Last Christmas

This story develops over a decade, each episode set around Christmas.

Bea has some decisions to make. Does she stay with her safe, dependable but staid boyfriend or does she seize the chance to seek out a new life in NY.

A chance meeting turns into a seat-mate situation, turns into potential romance.  But each episode shows how Bea's life could have turned out, sliding doors style.  There are more strands to her story than just her stalled love-live, Bea is hiding from a trauma, thinking that if she leaves her life and "it" behind, she can escape her feelings about it.

Bea is a complicated character - she has flaws, sometimes her own worst enemy and completely selfish, sometimes sympathetic and in need of a hug! Her London life deals with depression and family and friendship.  NY gives her a clean slate but still it's not the dream escape she thinks it will be.

Seeing the two timelines occasionally overlap, but seeing the events from another perspective helps you to see her decision-making in action and the reasoning she uses for those decisions. I was happy with the outcome and thought she finally "grew into" her decisions and accepted her agency in her own life and no longer tries to shirk responsibility for causing some of her own problems.

Nicola Sarah Brooks

This story develops over a decade, each episode set around Christmas.

Bea has some decisions to make. Does she stay with her safe, dependable but staid boyfriend or does she seize the chance to seek out a new life in NY.

A chance meeting turns into a seat-mate situation, turns into potential romance.  But each episode shows how Bea's life could have turned out, sliding doors style.  There are more strands to her story than just her stalled love-live, Bea is hiding from a trauma, thinking that if she leaves her life and "it" behind, she can escape her feelings about it.

Bea is a complicated character - she has flaws, sometimes her own worst enemy and completely selfish, sometimes sympathetic and in need of a hug! Her London life deals with depression and family and friendship.  NY gives her a clean slate but still it's not the dream escape she thinks it will be.

Seeing the two timelines occasionally overlap, but seeing the events from another perspective helps you to see her decision-making in action and the reasoning she uses for those decisions. I was happy with the outcome and thought she finally "grew into" her decisions and accepted her agency in her own life and no longer tries to shirk responsibility for causing some of her own problems.

Last Christmas

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