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The Bluff
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Succession meets The Family Stone in bestselling author Wade Rouse’s humorous and sharply observant look at a family teetering on the edge of merry mayhem.
The Chapmans do Christmas the way they do everything: impeccably, expensively, and with the unshakable belief that good lighting can conceal bad blood. Their annual Christmas card may look picture-perfect, but behind the polite smiles there’s a storm brewing. This year, at their grand lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, a snowstorm traps generations of Chapmans—and their schemes—under one roof.
Chris Chapman is on the verge of losing everything: his father’s trust, his role at the helm of the family business, and his wife’s respect. Kat Chapman is already fed up with hosting her critical, stuck-up in-laws and their impossibly inflexible holiday traditions. Her solution? Invite her working-class parents – born and bred Islanders – for Christmas, much to the horror of the Chapmans, whose rule that “We do not share Christmas with other people” is about to be broken.
As the snow piles up, so do the grievances: their children—fiercely liberal Leah and conservative golden-boy Chip—are locked in a battle of wits, Chris’s vaguely corrupt brother Cormac and his calculating trophy wife are stirring the pot, and Kat’s mother is holding onto a secret that could upend the entire game.
Deliciously messy and surprisingly tender, The Bluff is a feisty festive family drama about money, marriage, power, and all the things we bring to the holiday table besides the turkey.
The Chapmans do Christmas the way they do everything: impeccably, expensively, and with the unshakable belief that good lighting can conceal bad blood. Their annual Christmas card may look picture-perfect, but behind the polite smiles there’s a storm brewing. This year, at their grand lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, a snowstorm traps generations of Chapmans—and their schemes—under one roof.
Chris Chapman is on the verge of losing everything: his father’s trust, his role at the helm of the family business, and his wife’s respect. Kat Chapman is already fed up with hosting her critical, stuck-up in-laws and their impossibly inflexible holiday traditions. Her solution? Invite her working-class parents – born and bred Islanders – for Christmas, much to the horror of the Chapmans, whose rule that “We do not share Christmas with other people” is about to be broken.
As the snow piles up, so do the grievances: their children—fiercely liberal Leah and conservative golden-boy Chip—are locked in a battle of wits, Chris’s vaguely corrupt brother Cormac and his calculating trophy wife are stirring the pot, and Kat’s mother is holding onto a secret that could upend the entire game.
Deliciously messy and surprisingly tender, The Bluff is a feisty festive family drama about money, marriage, power, and all the things we bring to the holiday table besides the turkey.
304 pages, Paperback
Expected publication October 13, 2026
About the author
Wade Rouse
11 books341 followersWADE ROUSE is the critically acclaimed author ofthe memoirs America’s Boy, Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler, and At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream and editor of the upcoming humorous dog anthology I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship!He is a humor columnist for Metrosource magazine. Rouse lives outside Saugatuck, Michigan, with his partner, Gary, and their mutts, Marge and Mabel.
(source: Amazon)
(source: Amazon)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Wade Rouse is forever an auto-buy author for me, and I throughly enjoyed The Bluff and found it incredibly engaging—the complicated, messy Chapman family and all of their socioeconomic and relationship issues kept me turning the pages. That said, this is a particularly heavy book, and I wouldn’t necessarily call it a Christmas book so much as a book about a deeply complicated family that happens to take place at Christmas. The holiday itself sits second fiddle to the family drama, but between the secrets, resentments, money, marriage, and power struggles, there is more than enough here to keep you invested until the very end. Wade always delivers an emotional tale.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Please Stand Still While We Pretend This Family Is Fine
In “The Bluff,” Wade Rouse uses Christmas portraits, giant checks, fake pregnancies, red sweaters, corporate succession, and one relocated tree to expose the amount of labor required to keep a perfect family picture looking perfect.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | October 2nd, 2026
Doubt arrives in Wade Rouse’s “The Bluff” through interior decorating. Kat Chapman does not declare war on her rich in-laws or expose a family secret. She moves the Christmas tree. At Brigadoon, the Chapman cottage on Mackinac Island, the tree has always stood in the foyer because that is where it photographs best beside the staircase lined with family portraits. Kat wants it near the fireplace and lake windows, where people might actually sit beside it. The gesture is tiny, domestic, faintly ridiculous, and therefore exact. Is Christmas meant to be lived or staged? Rouse spends the rest of the novel asking how many people have been arranged inside a Chapman picture, and what happens when they start moving themselves.
Everyone arrives with a preferred arrangement. Patriarch CS, founder of Chapman Enterprises, treats money, competition, male succession, and pressure as virtues. His wife, Charli, guards holiday customs like evidence. Their son Chris is trying to run the family company without becoming his father; Chris’s wife Kat, an islander who grew up working class, has spent years being made to feel that marrying into money should count as gratitude enough. Cormac wants Chris’s job and the recognition he thinks his surname promises. Cormac’s younger wife, Brie, invents a pregnancy partly to improve their leverage. Teenagers Chip and Leah are already learning which roles the adults reward. Kat’s parents, Bob and Shirley, bring another class history altogether. Then estranged son Chase returns with his husband, Gary, after years of exclusion. Snow closes the exits. Christmas becomes compulsory intimacy with weather.
More useful than the sheer number of narrators is what the twelve points of view do to culpability. Charli can be Kat’s tyrant, Leah’s relic, Chase’s failed mother, Shirley’s unexpected caretaker, Gary’s wary prospective ally, and, in her own chapters, the child of emotionally absent parents. Chip can look like CS’s apprentice until his own sections reveal how frightened he is that the apprenticeship is working. The voices are more distinct by social position than by radically different syntax, but the relay of consciousness keeps revising the reader’s judgments. No one gets final ownership of anybody else. Even Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel are allowed a say, which makes the human family’s certainty about itself look slightly provincial.
Even the tree changes meaning once the novel keeps looking at it. Its foyer placement belongs to Charli’s annual Christmas photograph, whose promise of continuity begins to resemble domestic propaganda: same staircase, same red clothes, same smiles, same insistence that prosperity and togetherness are interchangeable. Kat’s move alters not only the room but the future image. The center of Christmas slides from display space toward living space. Later, when Chris and Cormac fight on the staircase and send framed family portraits crashing around them, Rouse is hardly whispering the symbolism. Yet the scene works because the archive has already been established as an instrument of control. The brothers are not simply fighting beneath family history. They are breaking the preferred version of it.
Tradition becomes stranger, and better, in Shirley’s ornament-making scene. Charli makes a little figure modeled on Tillie, the nanny who cared for her when her wealthy parents traveled and forgot to leave her a Christmas present. Tillie found Charli a doll, stayed with her instead of her own children, and cooked the stuffing and fruitcake Charli has spent decades guarding as sacred family customs. Suddenly those foods change class. They are not proofs of Chapman refinement but traces of paid care, abandonment, sacrifice, and tenderness. Charli has spent years policing Kat’s working-class traditions while some of her own most cherished rituals were created by a woman whose labor her family could buy and whose loss the Chapman mythology scarcely records.
Rouse’s recurring objects are strongest when they keep changing hands and meanings. Kat’s homemade fudge looks quaint beside Chapman wealth until CS fills the stockings with giant checks and stock, making her handwork disappear beneath capital. The checks look generous until their unequal amounts reveal whom he is cultivating and what he expects in return. Stock, trusts, prenups, promised money for a grandson, corporate titles, and gifts turn affection into financial syntax. Brie learns this family’s operating system with alarming speed: “Everything is contractual. Everything is a bluff. Even love.” She is wrong about love and right about the Chapmans often enough to make the distinction uncomfortable.
If money is one Chapman language, masculinity is another. CS tutors Chip in danger, accumulation, sexual conquest, toughness, and the refusal to show need. Chip sometimes performs the part, but Shirley’s ornament exercise quietly undoes him. He paints a baseball representing a childhood trip with Chris, assuming his father has forgotten it. Chris remembers every detail. The recognition knocks the swagger loose, and Chip finally protests that he is not a man yet, whatever his grandfather says, but a kid who wants someone in his corner. Chris holds him. In a novel crowded with fireworks, schemes, fights, and revelations, the scene is modest enough to land cleanly. Inheritance here is behavioral before it is financial.
Perhaps the sharpest collision between family and business arrives when Chase and CS finally speak alone. CS says he loves his son but cannot promise that such love extends comfortably to Gary, their coming child, and Chase’s full public life. He calls acceptance a “deal.” Chase answers, “It’s not a deal, Dad. I’m your son, not a subsidiary you’re trying to acquire.” The category error is brutal and exact: CS has negotiated belonging for so long that he talks to his child in acquisition language. Chase rejects the metaphor, then still gives him “terms.” Even resistance has to borrow the father’s grammar.
Afterward, the two men shake hands, and Rouse refuses to inflate the gesture. Chase understands it as “either a truce or a goodbye,” specifically not forgiveness or understanding. That leaves an abrasion the Christmas machinery cannot buff away. Chase does not need to stop loving CS in order to deny him unrestricted access, and he does not owe a redemptive meaning to a late, partial gesture. Love remains. So does the boundary.
Part of Shirley’s return to Mackinac is a return to a life she never fully buried. She has Parkinson disease, has become depressed, and has been contemplating suicide rather than letting Bob, Kat, and the grandchildren watch her decline. She also carries the memory of Mitch, a first love tied to the Grand Hotel and “Somewhere in Time,” a romance she never entirely released. Rouse withholds this material in stages: sweet grandmother, then woman strangely overwhelmed by place, then keeper of a ring and a lost romance, then person imagining death as a final act of control. The disclosures do not overturn the character we met. They expose how much work that version of Shirley required.
At the crisis point, the construction is almost suspiciously efficient. Lizzy, Shirley’s dog, gets into the pills Shirley has hidden; Chip realizes from a letter that his grandmother intends to die; and Charli, who trained as a nurse before marriage narrowed her life, is the person who knows what to do. She helps save the dog, then sits with Shirley and hears the story she has concealed. Minutes earlier Charli has stared at the identical staircase portraits and whispered, “Change, Charli.” Now change gets a physical job: kneel, listen, clean up, keep someone alive. The plot gathers an improbable number of threads into one bedroom, but the scene earns its emotion by making care precede explanation.
Directness, however, is also the novel’s most persistent artistic cost. Rouse is better at building images than at leaving them alone. Kat moves a tree whose old placement embodies the family’s obsession with presentation; later Leah tells her, “You moved a mountain.” Mackinac watches winter loosen and then explains that life and family are like the seasons, adding, “We are all islands, but we are all connected to something greater.” Corm, after demonstrating his values for a hundred pages, announces that he is “a wealthy, morally bankrupt man.” The pattern is not fatal, but it is recurrent: scene plus symbol becomes scene plus symbol plus interpretation. Rouse often gives the reader the picture and its caption.
In motion, the prose is much more agile. Rouse favors short-to-medium sentences, fragments, rhetorical questions, quick reversals, pop-cultural shorthand, and punch lines that arrive before a scene can grow solemn about itself. The jokes often work as pressure valves rather than exits: embarrassment and grief are allowed to occupy the same room without requiring a tonal costume change. Gary’s extravagant patter differs from CS’s sports-and-business maxims; Leah filters experience through theater and quotation; Chip through adolescent status and slang; Charli through judgment and social calibration. Yet late in the novel several narrators acquire a suspiciously similar ability to summarize the book’s themes in polished formulations. The structure is polyphonic. The wisdom sometimes sounds like one person passing the microphone around.
Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel could have become snow-globe gimmicks. Instead they alter the scale of time. The Chapmans treat a few decades of portraits and customs as natural law; an island thinks in seasons, a hotel in generations of arrival and departure. Leah explicitly invokes Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner,” which the Thornton Wilder estate describes as compressing ninety years and four generations into one holiday meal. Rouse performs something like Wilder’s inverse. Rather than letting ninety years race through Christmas, he lets several Christmas days swell until decades of inheritance occupy the room at once. Repetition is not background decoration here. It is how time becomes visible.
Inside that structure, momentum comes from overlapping clocks. The storm worsens; Christmas rituals keep approaching; Brie’s fake pregnancy edges toward exposure; Shirley approaches a private deadline; Chase remains the family member who may or may not return; Chris is fighting for the company; Charli is fighting for the photograph; everyone is wondering when the island will let them leave. Rouse often exits one conflict just before resolution and reenters through another consciousness. The blackout that coincides with Chase’s arrival is almost comically perfect, but it earns the theatricality: the old family portrait cannot be completed just before the son cropped from that history walks through the door. The mechanism shows. It still works.
The book’s harder wisdom is that recognition does not reliably produce reform. CS can articulate how his own father made insecurity into a parenting method; he can recognize that the system created people starved for love and attention; he can privately admit that he stripped Charli of independence. Yet when she says they need to change, he answers that he cannot and will not. The refusal leaves him less psychologically supple than Charli or Shirley, but it also keeps Christmas from becoming a moral solvent. Knowing why you became cruel is not the same thing as becoming less cruel.
Rouse has said this resistance was deliberate. In an October 2 interview with Jennifer Vido for Fresh Fiction, he explained that CS originally softened more, but after discussions with MIRA editor Susan Swinwood he revised those scenes so the patriarch remained resistant while other characters changed. That revision history is useful precisely because it does not rescue CS from criticism; it tells us the stiffness is chosen, then leaves us to decide what the choice costs. He also said Brie’s ending was reconsidered after Swinwood questioned why the woman was being punished more severely than men behaving just as badly. Intention does not settle execution, but the revision history clarifies the uneven distribution of redemption: some people get insight, some get a second chance, and some keep the habits that have made everyone else miserable.
One revealing counterexample is Corm and Brie, who understand quite a lot and improve almost not at all. Brie’s false pregnancy is exposed; Corm appears ready to leave her; CS then recruits both into a fresh plan against Chris; Corm tries to rewrite the marital financial terms; Brie reveals that she recorded the conspiracy and forces him to retreat. Their marriage survives as mutually assured destruction with champagne. They are not fooled by the Chapman system. They have learned it beautifully. Self-knowledge, the book concedes, can be used to escape a role or to play it more profitably.
Precisely because of that, “The Bluff” never quite collapses into a sermon against tradition. Charli changes, but remains vain, bossy, image-conscious Charli. Chase establishes boundaries without extinguishing love. Shirley relinquishes the fantasy of dying into her past, but the past is not exposed as worthless. Chip learns how dangerous the Chapman model of masculinity and inheritance can be, yet the epilogue finds him hoping that his future children and grandchildren may someday wear red sweaters and pose again on the Brigadoon staircase. The inherited ritual is not automatically the enemy.
Over time, the more exact distinction becomes repetition versus consent. Shirley tells the ornament-makers, “It’s not about being perfect. It’s about creating a memory.” Charli has spent years behaving as though memory requires replication. Kat offers another model. She brings her parents, her fudge, her own rules, Chase and Gary, and eventually another geography into Christmas without demanding that every older thing disappear. A ritual can outlive the authority that once enforced it. It can even become tender again.
Under the comedy, Rouse also understands that affection does not make people less ridiculous. Gary can deliver one of the book’s necessary moral confrontations and still sound as though he has mentally arranged his lighting. Charli can become more humane and immediately worry about her hair in the family photograph. Chip can achieve an insight about Leah and then recommend contact lenses. The humor is broad, occasionally shameless, but rarely cruel toward vulnerability. These people remain embarrassing after their epiphanies. That persistence is funnier, and more convincing, than a wholesale personality renovation.
Like its characters, though, the book can keep talking after the important thing has already happened. Gary’s confrontation with Chase’s parents states nearly every grievance the story has accumulated. Leah eventually inventories everybody’s mask. Chris reflects at length on marriage. Mackinac translates weather into philosophy. Any one of these passages can be moving; together they reveal a novelist anxious that a reader might miss the point. A little more unclaimed space around the objects would let them keep working after the paragraph ends. The tree, the check, the ring, the sweater, the broken frame: these are usually more eloquent than the abstract sentences that follow them.
On the California beach of the epilogue, the argument becomes visual again. The staircase has become sand; snow has become surf; Chase, Gary, and baby Trey are inside the frame; CS is not. The red sweaters survive, altered with sequined Cs for Chapman, Christmas, and California. Charli is still Charli enough to request a touch-up. Shirley is alive and responding to treatment. Nothing about the scene claims that the family has become pure. What has changed is the composition and, more importantly, who gets to enter it.
So “The Bluff” earns 85/100, or 4/5 Goodreads stars. Its pleasures come from a deftly managed ensemble, fast comic timing, genuine emotional force, and a formal design that keeps returning to the same rooms and objects from altered angles. Its weakness is almost the inverse of that gift: Rouse makes the arrangement legible, then too often explains the arrangement after we have already seen it. The best pages trust the furniture.
Down in Michigan, the old staircase still waits. Chip imagines that his own descendants may someday return to Brigadoon, put on red sweaters, and pose beneath the accumulated faces of the dead. After everything the novel has exposed, the wish is not a surrender to the old order. It is the final question the book leaves hanging: can inheritance survive choice? The tree is still a Christmas tree. The sweater is still red. The picture survives. The frame widens.
In “The Bluff,” Wade Rouse uses Christmas portraits, giant checks, fake pregnancies, red sweaters, corporate succession, and one relocated tree to expose the amount of labor required to keep a perfect family picture looking perfect.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | October 2nd, 2026
Doubt arrives in Wade Rouse’s “The Bluff” through interior decorating. Kat Chapman does not declare war on her rich in-laws or expose a family secret. She moves the Christmas tree. At Brigadoon, the Chapman cottage on Mackinac Island, the tree has always stood in the foyer because that is where it photographs best beside the staircase lined with family portraits. Kat wants it near the fireplace and lake windows, where people might actually sit beside it. The gesture is tiny, domestic, faintly ridiculous, and therefore exact. Is Christmas meant to be lived or staged? Rouse spends the rest of the novel asking how many people have been arranged inside a Chapman picture, and what happens when they start moving themselves.
Everyone arrives with a preferred arrangement. Patriarch CS, founder of Chapman Enterprises, treats money, competition, male succession, and pressure as virtues. His wife, Charli, guards holiday customs like evidence. Their son Chris is trying to run the family company without becoming his father; Chris’s wife Kat, an islander who grew up working class, has spent years being made to feel that marrying into money should count as gratitude enough. Cormac wants Chris’s job and the recognition he thinks his surname promises. Cormac’s younger wife, Brie, invents a pregnancy partly to improve their leverage. Teenagers Chip and Leah are already learning which roles the adults reward. Kat’s parents, Bob and Shirley, bring another class history altogether. Then estranged son Chase returns with his husband, Gary, after years of exclusion. Snow closes the exits. Christmas becomes compulsory intimacy with weather.
More useful than the sheer number of narrators is what the twelve points of view do to culpability. Charli can be Kat’s tyrant, Leah’s relic, Chase’s failed mother, Shirley’s unexpected caretaker, Gary’s wary prospective ally, and, in her own chapters, the child of emotionally absent parents. Chip can look like CS’s apprentice until his own sections reveal how frightened he is that the apprenticeship is working. The voices are more distinct by social position than by radically different syntax, but the relay of consciousness keeps revising the reader’s judgments. No one gets final ownership of anybody else. Even Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel are allowed a say, which makes the human family’s certainty about itself look slightly provincial.
Even the tree changes meaning once the novel keeps looking at it. Its foyer placement belongs to Charli’s annual Christmas photograph, whose promise of continuity begins to resemble domestic propaganda: same staircase, same red clothes, same smiles, same insistence that prosperity and togetherness are interchangeable. Kat’s move alters not only the room but the future image. The center of Christmas slides from display space toward living space. Later, when Chris and Cormac fight on the staircase and send framed family portraits crashing around them, Rouse is hardly whispering the symbolism. Yet the scene works because the archive has already been established as an instrument of control. The brothers are not simply fighting beneath family history. They are breaking the preferred version of it.
Tradition becomes stranger, and better, in Shirley’s ornament-making scene. Charli makes a little figure modeled on Tillie, the nanny who cared for her when her wealthy parents traveled and forgot to leave her a Christmas present. Tillie found Charli a doll, stayed with her instead of her own children, and cooked the stuffing and fruitcake Charli has spent decades guarding as sacred family customs. Suddenly those foods change class. They are not proofs of Chapman refinement but traces of paid care, abandonment, sacrifice, and tenderness. Charli has spent years policing Kat’s working-class traditions while some of her own most cherished rituals were created by a woman whose labor her family could buy and whose loss the Chapman mythology scarcely records.
Rouse’s recurring objects are strongest when they keep changing hands and meanings. Kat’s homemade fudge looks quaint beside Chapman wealth until CS fills the stockings with giant checks and stock, making her handwork disappear beneath capital. The checks look generous until their unequal amounts reveal whom he is cultivating and what he expects in return. Stock, trusts, prenups, promised money for a grandson, corporate titles, and gifts turn affection into financial syntax. Brie learns this family’s operating system with alarming speed: “Everything is contractual. Everything is a bluff. Even love.” She is wrong about love and right about the Chapmans often enough to make the distinction uncomfortable.
If money is one Chapman language, masculinity is another. CS tutors Chip in danger, accumulation, sexual conquest, toughness, and the refusal to show need. Chip sometimes performs the part, but Shirley’s ornament exercise quietly undoes him. He paints a baseball representing a childhood trip with Chris, assuming his father has forgotten it. Chris remembers every detail. The recognition knocks the swagger loose, and Chip finally protests that he is not a man yet, whatever his grandfather says, but a kid who wants someone in his corner. Chris holds him. In a novel crowded with fireworks, schemes, fights, and revelations, the scene is modest enough to land cleanly. Inheritance here is behavioral before it is financial.
Perhaps the sharpest collision between family and business arrives when Chase and CS finally speak alone. CS says he loves his son but cannot promise that such love extends comfortably to Gary, their coming child, and Chase’s full public life. He calls acceptance a “deal.” Chase answers, “It’s not a deal, Dad. I’m your son, not a subsidiary you’re trying to acquire.” The category error is brutal and exact: CS has negotiated belonging for so long that he talks to his child in acquisition language. Chase rejects the metaphor, then still gives him “terms.” Even resistance has to borrow the father’s grammar.
Afterward, the two men shake hands, and Rouse refuses to inflate the gesture. Chase understands it as “either a truce or a goodbye,” specifically not forgiveness or understanding. That leaves an abrasion the Christmas machinery cannot buff away. Chase does not need to stop loving CS in order to deny him unrestricted access, and he does not owe a redemptive meaning to a late, partial gesture. Love remains. So does the boundary.
Part of Shirley’s return to Mackinac is a return to a life she never fully buried. She has Parkinson disease, has become depressed, and has been contemplating suicide rather than letting Bob, Kat, and the grandchildren watch her decline. She also carries the memory of Mitch, a first love tied to the Grand Hotel and “Somewhere in Time,” a romance she never entirely released. Rouse withholds this material in stages: sweet grandmother, then woman strangely overwhelmed by place, then keeper of a ring and a lost romance, then person imagining death as a final act of control. The disclosures do not overturn the character we met. They expose how much work that version of Shirley required.
At the crisis point, the construction is almost suspiciously efficient. Lizzy, Shirley’s dog, gets into the pills Shirley has hidden; Chip realizes from a letter that his grandmother intends to die; and Charli, who trained as a nurse before marriage narrowed her life, is the person who knows what to do. She helps save the dog, then sits with Shirley and hears the story she has concealed. Minutes earlier Charli has stared at the identical staircase portraits and whispered, “Change, Charli.” Now change gets a physical job: kneel, listen, clean up, keep someone alive. The plot gathers an improbable number of threads into one bedroom, but the scene earns its emotion by making care precede explanation.
Directness, however, is also the novel’s most persistent artistic cost. Rouse is better at building images than at leaving them alone. Kat moves a tree whose old placement embodies the family’s obsession with presentation; later Leah tells her, “You moved a mountain.” Mackinac watches winter loosen and then explains that life and family are like the seasons, adding, “We are all islands, but we are all connected to something greater.” Corm, after demonstrating his values for a hundred pages, announces that he is “a wealthy, morally bankrupt man.” The pattern is not fatal, but it is recurrent: scene plus symbol becomes scene plus symbol plus interpretation. Rouse often gives the reader the picture and its caption.
In motion, the prose is much more agile. Rouse favors short-to-medium sentences, fragments, rhetorical questions, quick reversals, pop-cultural shorthand, and punch lines that arrive before a scene can grow solemn about itself. The jokes often work as pressure valves rather than exits: embarrassment and grief are allowed to occupy the same room without requiring a tonal costume change. Gary’s extravagant patter differs from CS’s sports-and-business maxims; Leah filters experience through theater and quotation; Chip through adolescent status and slang; Charli through judgment and social calibration. Yet late in the novel several narrators acquire a suspiciously similar ability to summarize the book’s themes in polished formulations. The structure is polyphonic. The wisdom sometimes sounds like one person passing the microphone around.
Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel could have become snow-globe gimmicks. Instead they alter the scale of time. The Chapmans treat a few decades of portraits and customs as natural law; an island thinks in seasons, a hotel in generations of arrival and departure. Leah explicitly invokes Thornton Wilder’s “The Long Christmas Dinner,” which the Thornton Wilder estate describes as compressing ninety years and four generations into one holiday meal. Rouse performs something like Wilder’s inverse. Rather than letting ninety years race through Christmas, he lets several Christmas days swell until decades of inheritance occupy the room at once. Repetition is not background decoration here. It is how time becomes visible.
Inside that structure, momentum comes from overlapping clocks. The storm worsens; Christmas rituals keep approaching; Brie’s fake pregnancy edges toward exposure; Shirley approaches a private deadline; Chase remains the family member who may or may not return; Chris is fighting for the company; Charli is fighting for the photograph; everyone is wondering when the island will let them leave. Rouse often exits one conflict just before resolution and reenters through another consciousness. The blackout that coincides with Chase’s arrival is almost comically perfect, but it earns the theatricality: the old family portrait cannot be completed just before the son cropped from that history walks through the door. The mechanism shows. It still works.
The book’s harder wisdom is that recognition does not reliably produce reform. CS can articulate how his own father made insecurity into a parenting method; he can recognize that the system created people starved for love and attention; he can privately admit that he stripped Charli of independence. Yet when she says they need to change, he answers that he cannot and will not. The refusal leaves him less psychologically supple than Charli or Shirley, but it also keeps Christmas from becoming a moral solvent. Knowing why you became cruel is not the same thing as becoming less cruel.
Rouse has said this resistance was deliberate. In an October 2 interview with Jennifer Vido for Fresh Fiction, he explained that CS originally softened more, but after discussions with MIRA editor Susan Swinwood he revised those scenes so the patriarch remained resistant while other characters changed. That revision history is useful precisely because it does not rescue CS from criticism; it tells us the stiffness is chosen, then leaves us to decide what the choice costs. He also said Brie’s ending was reconsidered after Swinwood questioned why the woman was being punished more severely than men behaving just as badly. Intention does not settle execution, but the revision history clarifies the uneven distribution of redemption: some people get insight, some get a second chance, and some keep the habits that have made everyone else miserable.
One revealing counterexample is Corm and Brie, who understand quite a lot and improve almost not at all. Brie’s false pregnancy is exposed; Corm appears ready to leave her; CS then recruits both into a fresh plan against Chris; Corm tries to rewrite the marital financial terms; Brie reveals that she recorded the conspiracy and forces him to retreat. Their marriage survives as mutually assured destruction with champagne. They are not fooled by the Chapman system. They have learned it beautifully. Self-knowledge, the book concedes, can be used to escape a role or to play it more profitably.
Precisely because of that, “The Bluff” never quite collapses into a sermon against tradition. Charli changes, but remains vain, bossy, image-conscious Charli. Chase establishes boundaries without extinguishing love. Shirley relinquishes the fantasy of dying into her past, but the past is not exposed as worthless. Chip learns how dangerous the Chapman model of masculinity and inheritance can be, yet the epilogue finds him hoping that his future children and grandchildren may someday wear red sweaters and pose again on the Brigadoon staircase. The inherited ritual is not automatically the enemy.
Over time, the more exact distinction becomes repetition versus consent. Shirley tells the ornament-makers, “It’s not about being perfect. It’s about creating a memory.” Charli has spent years behaving as though memory requires replication. Kat offers another model. She brings her parents, her fudge, her own rules, Chase and Gary, and eventually another geography into Christmas without demanding that every older thing disappear. A ritual can outlive the authority that once enforced it. It can even become tender again.
Under the comedy, Rouse also understands that affection does not make people less ridiculous. Gary can deliver one of the book’s necessary moral confrontations and still sound as though he has mentally arranged his lighting. Charli can become more humane and immediately worry about her hair in the family photograph. Chip can achieve an insight about Leah and then recommend contact lenses. The humor is broad, occasionally shameless, but rarely cruel toward vulnerability. These people remain embarrassing after their epiphanies. That persistence is funnier, and more convincing, than a wholesale personality renovation.
Like its characters, though, the book can keep talking after the important thing has already happened. Gary’s confrontation with Chase’s parents states nearly every grievance the story has accumulated. Leah eventually inventories everybody’s mask. Chris reflects at length on marriage. Mackinac translates weather into philosophy. Any one of these passages can be moving; together they reveal a novelist anxious that a reader might miss the point. A little more unclaimed space around the objects would let them keep working after the paragraph ends. The tree, the check, the ring, the sweater, the broken frame: these are usually more eloquent than the abstract sentences that follow them.
On the California beach of the epilogue, the argument becomes visual again. The staircase has become sand; snow has become surf; Chase, Gary, and baby Trey are inside the frame; CS is not. The red sweaters survive, altered with sequined Cs for Chapman, Christmas, and California. Charli is still Charli enough to request a touch-up. Shirley is alive and responding to treatment. Nothing about the scene claims that the family has become pure. What has changed is the composition and, more importantly, who gets to enter it.
So “The Bluff” earns 85/100, or 4/5 Goodreads stars. Its pleasures come from a deftly managed ensemble, fast comic timing, genuine emotional force, and a formal design that keeps returning to the same rooms and objects from altered angles. Its weakness is almost the inverse of that gift: Rouse makes the arrangement legible, then too often explains the arrangement after we have already seen it. The best pages trust the furniture.
Down in Michigan, the old staircase still waits. Chip imagines that his own descendants may someday return to Brigadoon, put on red sweaters, and pose beneath the accumulated faces of the dead. After everything the novel has exposed, the wish is not a surrender to the old order. It is the final question the book leaves hanging: can inheritance survive choice? The tree is still a Christmas tree. The sweater is still red. The picture survives. The frame widens.
August 11, 2026
Thank you to the Publisher for a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.
This is my first book by this author, so I am unable to comment on their previous works/ literary style outside of these pages.
I will say that the majority of the book is simply : Stereotypes.
Whatever that word brings to mind for you, is probably within these pages. You have the bitter, chauvinistic patricarch of the family who doesn't care about anyone but his legacy and how much power he has, trying to make his sons' fight each other for his approval and turning his grandson into his carbon copy. You have the socialite matriarch who cares more about how she is viewed than anything with substance. You have the daughter in law who is trying to push against the norms of the family to make her own well-rounded bubble with her husband and kids. and so on and so on.
The beginning of the story is just plain nasty. I mean that in the way that the characters treat each other. It's just hate filled and despite being centered around Christmas, there isn't much joy within the pages. The middle of the story starts seeing some slight changes and pushing against the established status-quo but the niggling comments are still very much present. Then the end of the story brings about a potential tragedy that ends well and some decent character development for some, and others who refuse to change and grow at all.
It was an easy read, but I do feel like things could have been a bit tighter in editing and a bit nicer in the way the characters actually developed. Some of the plot lines felt like they got lost in-between the insults.
I wouldn't recommend this for a Christmas read, despite the setting, especially not if you are looking for something cozy for the season. I would just recommend this as a book to read when you want something with.... interesting... family dynamics.
This is my first book by this author, so I am unable to comment on their previous works/ literary style outside of these pages.
I will say that the majority of the book is simply : Stereotypes.
Whatever that word brings to mind for you, is probably within these pages. You have the bitter, chauvinistic patricarch of the family who doesn't care about anyone but his legacy and how much power he has, trying to make his sons' fight each other for his approval and turning his grandson into his carbon copy. You have the socialite matriarch who cares more about how she is viewed than anything with substance. You have the daughter in law who is trying to push against the norms of the family to make her own well-rounded bubble with her husband and kids. and so on and so on.
The beginning of the story is just plain nasty. I mean that in the way that the characters treat each other. It's just hate filled and despite being centered around Christmas, there isn't much joy within the pages. The middle of the story starts seeing some slight changes and pushing against the established status-quo but the niggling comments are still very much present. Then the end of the story brings about a potential tragedy that ends well and some decent character development for some, and others who refuse to change and grow at all.
It was an easy read, but I do feel like things could have been a bit tighter in editing and a bit nicer in the way the characters actually developed. Some of the plot lines felt like they got lost in-between the insults.
I wouldn't recommend this for a Christmas read, despite the setting, especially not if you are looking for something cozy for the season. I would just recommend this as a book to read when you want something with.... interesting... family dynamics.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Author marketed this as "Succession meets The Family Stone. Humorous and sharply observant look at a family teetering on the edge of merry mayhem. "
I understood this family drama because it felt SO relatable! This isn’t a happy, cozy Christmas story—it’s messy, complicated, and filled with family drama, secrets, and characters who don’t always treat each other very well. And honestly, that’s the point!
The picture perfect Chapman family gathers for Christmas, but when a snowstorm traps everyone together, the polished holiday façade starts to crack. Behind the forced smiles are marital problems, simmering resentments, family secrets, bickering, and enough drama to ruin Christmas completely. What starts as a festive family gathering quickly turns into a deliciously messy holiday disaster where everyone has something to hide.
With a great cast of characters some likeable, some definitely NOT multiple POVs, plenty of tension, and ALL the messy holiday emotions, I was completely invested. It was well written, gutsy, emotional, and the chapters absolutely flew by. I even found myself laughing at times!
Because let’s be honest… most families have SOME kind of DRAMA and somehow the holidays have a way of bringing it all to the surface. This one felt real, chaotic, and completely relatable!
Read & listen on release date 10/13/2026.
Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the Book.
I understood this family drama because it felt SO relatable! This isn’t a happy, cozy Christmas story—it’s messy, complicated, and filled with family drama, secrets, and characters who don’t always treat each other very well. And honestly, that’s the point!
The picture perfect Chapman family gathers for Christmas, but when a snowstorm traps everyone together, the polished holiday façade starts to crack. Behind the forced smiles are marital problems, simmering resentments, family secrets, bickering, and enough drama to ruin Christmas completely. What starts as a festive family gathering quickly turns into a deliciously messy holiday disaster where everyone has something to hide.
With a great cast of characters some likeable, some definitely NOT multiple POVs, plenty of tension, and ALL the messy holiday emotions, I was completely invested. It was well written, gutsy, emotional, and the chapters absolutely flew by. I even found myself laughing at times!
Because let’s be honest… most families have SOME kind of DRAMA and somehow the holidays have a way of bringing it all to the surface. This one felt real, chaotic, and completely relatable!
Read & listen on release date 10/13/2026.
Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the Book.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I probably wouldn't have loved The Bluff as much as I did if I was not raised in Michigan. The setting in Mackinac Island made me want to read this Christmas story and the "realities" of Michigan made me enjoy the book.
What I loved was the different points of view of all the characters, including the island. I loved the setting as Mackinac is a favorite to me and many. I also enjoyed the stereotypes of the family in the story, the Chapmans, as their business is very similar to a famous one in Grand Rapids. Spoiler-I am glad that they gave value to life when a character considered suicide. I also enjoyed the forgiveness and reconciliation of family.
It isn't your typical, happy Christmas story, but has great family moments and a humor to it. I could have enjoyed it more without language that wasn't needed, It is not my typical read, but the Native Michigander enjoyed visiting Mackinac.
I received a complimentary copy thanks to NetGalley and publisher, but all opinions are my own.
What I loved was the different points of view of all the characters, including the island. I loved the setting as Mackinac is a favorite to me and many. I also enjoyed the stereotypes of the family in the story, the Chapmans, as their business is very similar to a famous one in Grand Rapids. Spoiler-I am glad that they gave value to life when a character considered suicide. I also enjoyed the forgiveness and reconciliation of family.
It isn't your typical, happy Christmas story, but has great family moments and a humor to it. I could have enjoyed it more without language that wasn't needed, It is not my typical read, but the Native Michigander enjoyed visiting Mackinac.
I received a complimentary copy thanks to NetGalley and publisher, but all opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
A fantastic story on Mackinac Island at Christmas. Discover the magic of Christmas and Mackinac Island. Blending of 2 families in this tender, touching story. Traditions old and new. Sit back and eat some delicious Mackinac Fudge.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
In a recent Substack, author Wade Rouse wrote these words about his upcoming novel The Bluff: “The heart of this book, the heart of our lives, is that our time is short, the people we love mean everything, and the best gifts are those that come from the heart. Even if it’s just time together. Why do we focus on the things that divide us? Why is it so hard to change, forgive, move on?”
This book is a family love story at its core. Inspired by two of the author’s favorite movies, The Family Stone and Somewhere in Time, it looks at love from many points of view. There is family love, which is often disguised as expectations and obligations, as well as the love found within friendship. There is the love of money, and greed masquerading as love, and characters who have had their lives shaped with little love. There are secrets, where love is withheld, and even lost forever, and places where love is reduced to a legal contract.
Told from the viewpoints of many characters, and even the iconic Grand Hotel and the island itself, there will be some characters you love and some you hate. You will laugh and also want to cry as you digest the words of each character. There will be chances for redemption and the hope for change and adaptation, but you won’t always get the happy ending, because this novel keeps it real. Two families with seemingly little in common come together to celebrate a Christmas on Mackinac Island, Michigan that will turn out to be like no other. There will be tension, traditions will be tested, and relationships strained. Even the weather doesn’t cooperate.
Not your typical Hallmark movie holiday novel, The Bluff will hopefully feel like you want to cozy up by the fire and reflect on the holidays you have shared with the significant people in your life. Maybe it IS time to be the change you want to be in your world. If some of the characters in this book can start to change and grow, maybe we can, too. Why is it so hard to change, forgive, and move on? Why indeed? Thank you Wade Rouse for once again masterfully providing a book whose themes will resonate long after the last page is turned, and thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read it early.
This book is a family love story at its core. Inspired by two of the author’s favorite movies, The Family Stone and Somewhere in Time, it looks at love from many points of view. There is family love, which is often disguised as expectations and obligations, as well as the love found within friendship. There is the love of money, and greed masquerading as love, and characters who have had their lives shaped with little love. There are secrets, where love is withheld, and even lost forever, and places where love is reduced to a legal contract.
Told from the viewpoints of many characters, and even the iconic Grand Hotel and the island itself, there will be some characters you love and some you hate. You will laugh and also want to cry as you digest the words of each character. There will be chances for redemption and the hope for change and adaptation, but you won’t always get the happy ending, because this novel keeps it real. Two families with seemingly little in common come together to celebrate a Christmas on Mackinac Island, Michigan that will turn out to be like no other. There will be tension, traditions will be tested, and relationships strained. Even the weather doesn’t cooperate.
Not your typical Hallmark movie holiday novel, The Bluff will hopefully feel like you want to cozy up by the fire and reflect on the holidays you have shared with the significant people in your life. Maybe it IS time to be the change you want to be in your world. If some of the characters in this book can start to change and grow, maybe we can, too. Why is it so hard to change, forgive, and move on? Why indeed? Thank you Wade Rouse for once again masterfully providing a book whose themes will resonate long after the last page is turned, and thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read it early.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The author notes the likeness of The Bluff to the Christmas movie The Family Stone and that is exactly the vibe I would use to describe it.
With The Bluff, Wade Rouse “finally” sets one of his Michigan based novels on Mackinac Island. Anyone who has visited the island will be familiar with the names and places that are mentioned in the book. In fact, there are chapters told from the Point of View of both The Grand Hotel and the island itself. I especially enjoyed the winter setting of the Mackinac Island setting, as it is one that not many are able to experience first hand.
The story is told over the Christmas holiday. The family has gathered on the island to celebrate at their usual location, their ‘cottage’. However, this year, instead of the matriarch running the festivities, the holiday is planned by her daughter-in-law. She tries to modify some of the long held traditions and faces pushback from the establishment. Each chapter is one day or day part and is told from multiple points of view. While there are many points of view, the author does not confuse the reader in the storytelling. In the house we find: a patriarch and matriarch, 2 grandparent-in-laws, 3 sons, 3 in-laws, 2 grandkids, and a dog.
What I most liked about this novel is that while there is a redemption arc, there is also an unredemptive arc as well. Things are not wrapped up neatly in a bow at the end, but the reader is okay with that.
I received an advanced reader copy via NetGalley.
With The Bluff, Wade Rouse “finally” sets one of his Michigan based novels on Mackinac Island. Anyone who has visited the island will be familiar with the names and places that are mentioned in the book. In fact, there are chapters told from the Point of View of both The Grand Hotel and the island itself. I especially enjoyed the winter setting of the Mackinac Island setting, as it is one that not many are able to experience first hand.
The story is told over the Christmas holiday. The family has gathered on the island to celebrate at their usual location, their ‘cottage’. However, this year, instead of the matriarch running the festivities, the holiday is planned by her daughter-in-law. She tries to modify some of the long held traditions and faces pushback from the establishment. Each chapter is one day or day part and is told from multiple points of view. While there are many points of view, the author does not confuse the reader in the storytelling. In the house we find: a patriarch and matriarch, 2 grandparent-in-laws, 3 sons, 3 in-laws, 2 grandkids, and a dog.
What I most liked about this novel is that while there is a redemption arc, there is also an unredemptive arc as well. Things are not wrapped up neatly in a bow at the end, but the reader is okay with that.
I received an advanced reader copy via NetGalley.
September 8, 2026
4.50⭐️
I received an advance galley of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
The Chapmans have a certain snobbish, self-contained way of doing Christmas that, on the surface, makes them seem perfect. But when the whole family and several unwelcome guests are stranded in their lakefront cottage, tensions will hit mercurial levels.
Who doesn’t love a story of a chaotic family stuck together in a storm? Told through multiple POVs, we have rich people behaving badly and secrets just bursting to come out. Rouse does an amazing job of having us root for some and despise others. And just when there is some redemption, the rug is pulled out again. The first half of the book had me laughing out loud and consuming popcorn chapter after chapter. Then he throws in who I consider the highlight of the whole story. A top book of the year for me.
I received an advance galley of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
The Chapmans have a certain snobbish, self-contained way of doing Christmas that, on the surface, makes them seem perfect. But when the whole family and several unwelcome guests are stranded in their lakefront cottage, tensions will hit mercurial levels.
Who doesn’t love a story of a chaotic family stuck together in a storm? Told through multiple POVs, we have rich people behaving badly and secrets just bursting to come out. Rouse does an amazing job of having us root for some and despise others. And just when there is some redemption, the rug is pulled out again. The first half of the book had me laughing out loud and consuming popcorn chapter after chapter. Then he throws in who I consider the highlight of the whole story. A top book of the year for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
If you like feel-good movies about the holidays, you’ll be cheering for this read from an author who never disappoints. I won’t categorize it as “light” though because when have families getting together (under one roof) during a winter holiday ever been considered carefree, light duty?
And if your family falls into this category, I am available at Thanksgiving! Better yet – I’ll send my family to yours & I’ll heat up the taboo lasagna like Kat in the book.
If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it is the Carringtons & cast of the ‘80s TV Dynasty airlifted/dropped over Lake Huron onto Mackinac Island on December 23rd!
I was sensing a solid 4.5 up until the arrival of The Good Guys (Gary & Chase)…Just their backhanded compliments & innuendos earned 5 Stars!
If I could make one addition? In the beginning, these characters are all new to me. The author has been entertaining them for months or weeks, but I would have preferred a family tree. Maybe a visual of a mantle with stockings & the branches of the clan would have simplified the combatants from the opponents? I resorted to paper & pen myself & sorted out who went with who & most of all, who did not!
There isn’t any mistaking the senior members – Shirley & Bob Brown are arriving for their first holiday with The Chapmans although they’re unaware their arrival will surprise some. Mackinac Island is far from a new destination for them. The patriarch, C.S., & wife (Charli Chapman) are the dynamic pair that rule like royalty & share their wealth & status only when the mood strikes. It so rarely strikes also.
Any reader will be amiss if they don’t just do a quick look/see at this setting of Mackinac Island in Michigan. It is as close to Canada as it is a part of the US. While I have never been to Mackinac Island & most likely never will, I am drawn to book about this remote spot. Don’t skip over the refined elegance & simplicity to an island that is car-free in these times/accessible by ferry or air. Add to that, ice cutters are mandatory for access in the winter/early spring. After decades of traveling to many countries, books are my preferred mode of travel so thank you for this early holiday escape.
Be warned that when I finished this, I went looking at Christmas decorations. Get your holiday best with plenty of personalities under one roof with The Bluff.
Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins Publishing, & the author, Wade Rouse, for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair & honest review.
And if your family falls into this category, I am available at Thanksgiving! Better yet – I’ll send my family to yours & I’ll heat up the taboo lasagna like Kat in the book.
If I had to sum it up in one sentence, it is the Carringtons & cast of the ‘80s TV Dynasty airlifted/dropped over Lake Huron onto Mackinac Island on December 23rd!
I was sensing a solid 4.5 up until the arrival of The Good Guys (Gary & Chase)…Just their backhanded compliments & innuendos earned 5 Stars!
If I could make one addition? In the beginning, these characters are all new to me. The author has been entertaining them for months or weeks, but I would have preferred a family tree. Maybe a visual of a mantle with stockings & the branches of the clan would have simplified the combatants from the opponents? I resorted to paper & pen myself & sorted out who went with who & most of all, who did not!
There isn’t any mistaking the senior members – Shirley & Bob Brown are arriving for their first holiday with The Chapmans although they’re unaware their arrival will surprise some. Mackinac Island is far from a new destination for them. The patriarch, C.S., & wife (Charli Chapman) are the dynamic pair that rule like royalty & share their wealth & status only when the mood strikes. It so rarely strikes also.
Any reader will be amiss if they don’t just do a quick look/see at this setting of Mackinac Island in Michigan. It is as close to Canada as it is a part of the US. While I have never been to Mackinac Island & most likely never will, I am drawn to book about this remote spot. Don’t skip over the refined elegance & simplicity to an island that is car-free in these times/accessible by ferry or air. Add to that, ice cutters are mandatory for access in the winter/early spring. After decades of traveling to many countries, books are my preferred mode of travel so thank you for this early holiday escape.
Be warned that when I finished this, I went looking at Christmas decorations. Get your holiday best with plenty of personalities under one roof with The Bluff.
Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins Publishing, & the author, Wade Rouse, for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair & honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Title: The Bluff
Author: Wade Rouse
Genre: Family Christmas Drama
Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing/MIRA
Pub Date: October 13, 2026
My Rating: 4.3 Stars!
Pages: 304
Story is described as-
Deliciously messy and surprisingly tender, The Bluff is a feisty festive family drama about money, marriage, power, and all the things we bring to the holiday table besides the turkey.
I am a big audiobook fan and I did listen to this-I like that it had multiple narrators but must admit I missed something as I got more out of reading than then hearing it.
Story stars with the Chapmans do Christmas the way they do everything: impeccably, expensively, and with the unshakable belief that good lighting can conceal bad blood. Their annual Christmas card may look picture-perfect, but behind the polite smiles there’s a storm brewing. This year, at their grand lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, a snowstorm traps generations of Chapmans—and their schemes—under one roof.
I have read several Wade Rouse stories only by his pen name Viola Shipman which was his grandmother’s name. Those stories were all beautifully written with a message of family tradition. Although not a typical Viola Shipman story there is a message. Which I totally got second time around!
Yep the description is the way it started –once you read it you will be agreeing as well as adding more to describe it.
I enjoyed ‘The Author’s Note’ at the end where Wade Rouse explains why he decided to write this story.
Additionally, the discussion questions are – food for thought!
I want to thank NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/MIRA for this eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for October 13, 2026.
Audiobook review
Title: The Bluff
Author: Wade Rouse
Format: 🎧
Narrators: Andrew Eiden, Cassandra Campbell, Dan John Miller, Andrew Gibson, Alexandra Hunte, Dawn Harvey, Arthur Morey, Kate Marcin, Petrea Burchard, Michael Crouch, and Kristen Sieh
Genre: Christmas
Publisher: Harlequin Audio/MIRA
Pub Date: October 13, 2026
My Rating: 3.5 Stars!
Pages: 304
The Chapmans do Christmas the way they do everything: impeccably, expensively, and with the unshakable belief that good lighting can conceal bad blood. Their annual Christmas card may look picture-perfect, but behind the polite smiles there’s a storm brewing. This year, at their grand lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, a snowstorm traps generations of Chapmans—and their schemes—under one roof.
I have read several Wade Rouse stories only by his pen name Viola Shipman which was his grandmother’s name. Those stories were all beautifully written with a message of family tradition.
Yes! This has a message but not like a typical Viola Shipman story.
I did enjoy the author’s note at the end when Wade Rouse explains why he decided to write this story.
I want to thank NetGalley and Harlequin Audio/MIRA for this audiobook.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for October 16, 2026.
Author: Wade Rouse
Genre: Family Christmas Drama
Publisher: Harlequin Trade Publishing/MIRA
Pub Date: October 13, 2026
My Rating: 4.3 Stars!
Pages: 304
Story is described as-
Deliciously messy and surprisingly tender, The Bluff is a feisty festive family drama about money, marriage, power, and all the things we bring to the holiday table besides the turkey.
I am a big audiobook fan and I did listen to this-I like that it had multiple narrators but must admit I missed something as I got more out of reading than then hearing it.
Story stars with the Chapmans do Christmas the way they do everything: impeccably, expensively, and with the unshakable belief that good lighting can conceal bad blood. Their annual Christmas card may look picture-perfect, but behind the polite smiles there’s a storm brewing. This year, at their grand lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, a snowstorm traps generations of Chapmans—and their schemes—under one roof.
I have read several Wade Rouse stories only by his pen name Viola Shipman which was his grandmother’s name. Those stories were all beautifully written with a message of family tradition. Although not a typical Viola Shipman story there is a message. Which I totally got second time around!
Yep the description is the way it started –once you read it you will be agreeing as well as adding more to describe it.
I enjoyed ‘The Author’s Note’ at the end where Wade Rouse explains why he decided to write this story.
Additionally, the discussion questions are – food for thought!
I want to thank NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/MIRA for this eGalley.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for October 13, 2026.
Audiobook review
Title: The Bluff
Author: Wade Rouse
Format: 🎧
Narrators: Andrew Eiden, Cassandra Campbell, Dan John Miller, Andrew Gibson, Alexandra Hunte, Dawn Harvey, Arthur Morey, Kate Marcin, Petrea Burchard, Michael Crouch, and Kristen Sieh
Genre: Christmas
Publisher: Harlequin Audio/MIRA
Pub Date: October 13, 2026
My Rating: 3.5 Stars!
Pages: 304
The Chapmans do Christmas the way they do everything: impeccably, expensively, and with the unshakable belief that good lighting can conceal bad blood. Their annual Christmas card may look picture-perfect, but behind the polite smiles there’s a storm brewing. This year, at their grand lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, a snowstorm traps generations of Chapmans—and their schemes—under one roof.
I have read several Wade Rouse stories only by his pen name Viola Shipman which was his grandmother’s name. Those stories were all beautifully written with a message of family tradition.
Yes! This has a message but not like a typical Viola Shipman story.
I did enjoy the author’s note at the end when Wade Rouse explains why he decided to write this story.
I want to thank NetGalley and Harlequin Audio/MIRA for this audiobook.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for October 16, 2026.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Wade says in the acknowledgements that this book is Family Stone meets Succession and I honestly couldn't agree more.
The Bluff is a story about a family that is full of a lot of bad people and a few who are trying to actually be good and kind. It's a story of the tug and pull of those two types of people colliding and how adding familial dynamics on top of it makes for a whole other level of tension. But ultimately it's a story of it never being too late to redeem yourself.
I really liked how this story was told from so many POVs that Wade somehow made feel completely distinct. It truly is an art and this book is a great example of it working really well. I also really loved the condensed timeline. I could feel the stress of Christmas with the extended family coming off the page. I think my favorite part of the whole book was Charli - the matriarch of the family. At the beginning of the book, she is honestly absolutely horrible. A true nightmare of a mother. But throughout the story we get to see her grow and realize what kind of family relationships she actually wants to have. Not ones that are centered around money and what you can get other's to do for you, but a rather a little bit of love.
Now do I find it unrealistic that a person like Charli could have so much growth in such a short period of time? Oh absolutely, but that is why I love stories! Let a girl dream that people can find some goodness in themselves.
Once I started this one, I had a hard time putting it down. The setting is beautiful (it really becomes another character), the characters are messy and real, and the story lines are a little heartbreaking but ultimately prove we all have some love to give in this world.
I truly loved Wade's last book and I will continue to pick up his work in the future.
Thanks to Wade, Harlequin, and Netgalley for an early review copy!
The Bluff is a story about a family that is full of a lot of bad people and a few who are trying to actually be good and kind. It's a story of the tug and pull of those two types of people colliding and how adding familial dynamics on top of it makes for a whole other level of tension. But ultimately it's a story of it never being too late to redeem yourself.
I really liked how this story was told from so many POVs that Wade somehow made feel completely distinct. It truly is an art and this book is a great example of it working really well. I also really loved the condensed timeline. I could feel the stress of Christmas with the extended family coming off the page. I think my favorite part of the whole book was Charli - the matriarch of the family. At the beginning of the book, she is honestly absolutely horrible. A true nightmare of a mother. But throughout the story we get to see her grow and realize what kind of family relationships she actually wants to have. Not ones that are centered around money and what you can get other's to do for you, but a rather a little bit of love.
Now do I find it unrealistic that a person like Charli could have so much growth in such a short period of time? Oh absolutely, but that is why I love stories! Let a girl dream that people can find some goodness in themselves.
Once I started this one, I had a hard time putting it down. The setting is beautiful (it really becomes another character), the characters are messy and real, and the story lines are a little heartbreaking but ultimately prove we all have some love to give in this world.
I truly loved Wade's last book and I will continue to pick up his work in the future.
Thanks to Wade, Harlequin, and Netgalley for an early review copy!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I need to admit something, I don't actually think this is a Christmas book even though it takes place at Christmas.
A snowstorm traps this entire family together, and every grudge they have been hiding behind good lighting finally comes out.
🔥 Reasons to Read If You Love
🎄 Messy Family Gatherings
👀 Multiple POVs
🏝️ Setting as a Character
🧠 Micro Synopsis
The wealthy Chapman family gets trapped by a snowstorm at their lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, and when Kat invites her working class parents for Christmas, every carefully hidden grudge and secret starts surfacing. It follows generations of the family as decades of resentment finally boil over.
This book is really all about family dynamics more than anything else.
It gets messy, and honestly the characters are exactly who you expect them to be.
There are a few character arcs in here, but it leans more into showing you these people are exactly who you already knew them to be.
I would not really call this a holiday book even though it is set at Christmas.
There are a ton of POVs in this one, sometimes even within the same chapter.
A few moments get replayed from different characters' perspectives, which was a fun touch.
It is a short read and the ending felt satisfying.
Overall I really enjoyed this as a story full of mostly awful characters done really well.
Mackinac Island basically becomes its own character in this book, and it works.
There is also a running obsession with the movie Somewhere in Time that ties it all together in a fun way.
Would you survive this family's Christmas 👀
A snowstorm traps this entire family together, and every grudge they have been hiding behind good lighting finally comes out.
🔥 Reasons to Read If You Love
🎄 Messy Family Gatherings
👀 Multiple POVs
🏝️ Setting as a Character
🧠 Micro Synopsis
The wealthy Chapman family gets trapped by a snowstorm at their lakefront cottage on Mackinac Island, and when Kat invites her working class parents for Christmas, every carefully hidden grudge and secret starts surfacing. It follows generations of the family as decades of resentment finally boil over.
This book is really all about family dynamics more than anything else.
It gets messy, and honestly the characters are exactly who you expect them to be.
There are a few character arcs in here, but it leans more into showing you these people are exactly who you already knew them to be.
I would not really call this a holiday book even though it is set at Christmas.
There are a ton of POVs in this one, sometimes even within the same chapter.
A few moments get replayed from different characters' perspectives, which was a fun touch.
It is a short read and the ending felt satisfying.
Overall I really enjoyed this as a story full of mostly awful characters done really well.
Mackinac Island basically becomes its own character in this book, and it works.
There is also a running obsession with the movie Somewhere in Time that ties it all together in a fun way.
Would you survive this family's Christmas 👀
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Advanced reader's copy review
I am going to start this review a bit backwards, with what I struggled with. Because this was a phenomenally written book, but also a very tough one for me to read because of how awful so many of the characters were. Especially CS, who struck a personal chord in me, which was definitely the author’s intention, but still made it so there was only so much I could read at a time. I also wasn’t completely sold on the organization of the book, having very few chapters hosting every perspective within each one. But I was incredibly impressed by the multiple POVs. Every character gets a first person perspective (except Gary, who was probably my favorite), and each voice was so unique and identifiable. I also did like most of the family, especially Kat, Leah, Chase, Gary, and the Browns. Kat and Leah had such a sweet mother-daughter bond, and I also loved Kat with her mom. And of course I loved all the Christmas traditions and references to holiday movies. I also loved the setting, which had its own distinct personality. So overall I would recommend this book.
Thank you HarperCollins and Netgalley for the free advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
I am going to start this review a bit backwards, with what I struggled with. Because this was a phenomenally written book, but also a very tough one for me to read because of how awful so many of the characters were. Especially CS, who struck a personal chord in me, which was definitely the author’s intention, but still made it so there was only so much I could read at a time. I also wasn’t completely sold on the organization of the book, having very few chapters hosting every perspective within each one. But I was incredibly impressed by the multiple POVs. Every character gets a first person perspective (except Gary, who was probably my favorite), and each voice was so unique and identifiable. I also did like most of the family, especially Kat, Leah, Chase, Gary, and the Browns. Kat and Leah had such a sweet mother-daughter bond, and I also loved Kat with her mom. And of course I loved all the Christmas traditions and references to holiday movies. I also loved the setting, which had its own distinct personality. So overall I would recommend this book.
Thank you HarperCollins and Netgalley for the free advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Chapmans, a wealthy Michigan family, has always done Christmas exactly the same. They go to their second home on Mackinac Island every year and matriarch Charli rules the roost. But this year, her daughter-in-law, Kat, who comes from a middle class island family, has put herself in charge and changes ensue, much to Charli's displeasure. There's a host of other family drama between the two eldest brothers of the family and the young trophy wife of one of them.
This was a quick read for me because I was highly engaged and couldn't wait to continue reading. The characters and setting were well drawn. I'm not usually a fan of Christmas-themed books, but this one won me over given all the family dysfunction. My only quibble is with a bit of over-writing when the author includes some chapters toward the end narrated by both the island itself and the famous Grand Hotel. While this worked in the prologue, it really wasn't necessary at the end. Plus, while I could see the arcs of change among some of the characters, the author really didn't need to go and on about them.
Character Development: 5
Plot Development: 5
Quality of Writing: 4
Level of Engagement: 5
Highly recommended.
I was provided an ARC by the publisher via NetGalley.
This was a quick read for me because I was highly engaged and couldn't wait to continue reading. The characters and setting were well drawn. I'm not usually a fan of Christmas-themed books, but this one won me over given all the family dysfunction. My only quibble is with a bit of over-writing when the author includes some chapters toward the end narrated by both the island itself and the famous Grand Hotel. While this worked in the prologue, it really wasn't necessary at the end. Plus, while I could see the arcs of change among some of the characters, the author really didn't need to go and on about them.
Character Development: 5
Plot Development: 5
Quality of Writing: 4
Level of Engagement: 5
Highly recommended.
I was provided an ARC by the publisher via NetGalley.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Bluff is a family drama about the wealthy, picture-perfect Chapman family that takes place over Christmas week on Macknicac Island. When the family gathers at their lakefront cottage (named Brigadoon) to celebrate the holidays, a snowstorm traps them in, and their resentments start to boil over as unexpected guests are invited into the inner circle. The narrative is told from 12 distinct points of view, and I found them easy to differentiate in the audiobook format with a full cast of voice narrators. The thing that struck me the most from the get-go was the use of Mackinac Island and the Grand Hotel as their own characters. I hoped the author would push that technique more, but it was still a fun inclusion. Every single character in this story is messy and unlovable. Many readers will see their own imperfections in these characters, which made the story relatable even if it wasn’t lighthearted. The events in the book could have taken place at any time, but the Christmas backdrop was a believable situation to bring them all together. It was a super easy book to listen to, and I enjoyed the themes of forgiveness, shared humanity, and tradition.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Audio for the advance listening copy.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Audio for the advance listening copy.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
So much family drama! Wade Rouse is fabulous at composing a story that will keep you engaged from the very start. A storm is brewing on Mackinac Island and it isn’t just from the impending snowstorm. The wealthy Chapman family is gathering at their cottage to celebrate Christmas and their family traditions. Charli, the matriarch of the Chapman family typically runs the show but this year her daughter-in-law Kat is in charge of the festivities and has invited her working class family to join them for Christmas. As Kat tries to blend traditions from both families secrets and resentments begin to boil over. There are a lot of characters and points of view but the heart of the story is about family. Family holidays are not for the faint of heart but in the end family is what’s most important. This is a story about messy family dynamics, love, forgiveness, and the ability to change. Highly recommend.
Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the advanced eARC of The Bluff. All opinions expressed are my own.
Thank you Netgalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the advanced eARC of The Bluff. All opinions expressed are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Wade Rouse’s THAT’S WHAT FRIENDS ARE FOR was one of my favorite books earlier this year, so I was especially excited about THE BLUFF. Unfortunately, and much to my surprise, it was just okay for me.
We have 12 (!) POV characters. Consequently, we don’t get much character development with any of them. Also, more than half are entitled, unlikable stereotypes that grated on me throughout.
While I appreciated the message here, I felt it was extremely heavy-handed. Rather than a natural part of a character’s arc, I felt like the characters all had specific purposes, and their dialogue got a little preachy.
This story takes place over Christmas week, but it’s definitely more messy family drama than feel-good read.
I have both the ebook and audiobook. I mostly listened to the audio, which has a full cast and is really well done.
*Thanks to @HTPBooks, @HTPBooks_Audio, and @HTP_Hive (#HiveInfluencer) for the free eARC and audiobook downloads, provided via NetGalley.*
We have 12 (!) POV characters. Consequently, we don’t get much character development with any of them. Also, more than half are entitled, unlikable stereotypes that grated on me throughout.
While I appreciated the message here, I felt it was extremely heavy-handed. Rather than a natural part of a character’s arc, I felt like the characters all had specific purposes, and their dialogue got a little preachy.
This story takes place over Christmas week, but it’s definitely more messy family drama than feel-good read.
I have both the ebook and audiobook. I mostly listened to the audio, which has a full cast and is really well done.
*Thanks to @HTPBooks, @HTPBooks_Audio, and @HTP_Hive (#HiveInfluencer) for the free eARC and audiobook downloads, provided via NetGalley.*
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
So many stereotypes. Obnoxious, bigoted, entitled rich parents whose son has married a blue collar Mackinac Island girl, Kat. Her parents: kind hearted teachers with a secret. Her children: sweet Leah and Chip, the favorite of his overbearing wealthy grandfather. Her brother in law: volatile and abrasive, with a new young wife who is a schemer masquerading as a dumb, pretty Barbie doll. Kat and her family have always spent Christmas the way mother in law Charli demands, but this year she has invited her parents, much to Charli’s annoyance, to the family home ironically called Brigadoon. I liked the Mackinac Island setting, but had more than enough of this dysfunctional family’s Christmas drama. This author writes books under the pseudonym of Viola Shipman which I’ve enjoyed; this one was a big disappointment. I received an advance copy from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
August 8, 2026
The Bluff is one of the most unique books I’ve read! I’ve never read one where we were in so many different characters thoughts! This family was such a mess and it was so entertaining to read everything they were going through and how they would react to all the drama going on! I definitely was crying at some parts seeing the growth that many of the characters had and disappointed but not surprised about the lack of growth from some others! I now want to take a trip to Mackinac Island cause it sounds so enchanting! Loved the Christmas setting and it makes me long for the next few months to fly by so we can be at the season again so I can be with my own dysfunctional family! Definitely one to pick up and read this holiday
Thankful to have received an eARC from Harper Collins and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own
Thankful to have received an eARC from Harper Collins and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own
Read
September 21, 2026I honestly do not know how to rate this book. It's an ARC and I'd hate to give it a low rating just because I hated some of the very stereotypical characters, especially because I'm sure some were designed to hate (I wanted to punch Chip in the beginning of the book). The ever-changing points of view were dizzying and I'm not sure the gimmick of anthropomorphizing things like a house to share their emotions worked. However, there were some really sharp moments of dialogue that made me laugh and some much-needed growth for some of the characters, and also a dog. I read it quickly and although I almost quit it in the beginning due to aforementioned nasty characters (there's a reason I don't watch things like Succession, referenced a few times in the novel) I did end up sucked in until the end.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I was excited to review this book because I grew up in Michigan and thought the setting of Christmas on Mackinac Island would be spectacular! The author was able to transport me to the island. I was excited for a light, fluffy Christmas story but received so much more. The twists and turns that this book took me on were awesome! The family has many closets that they have hidden secrets and deceit in. The book gave me a new appreciation for my own dysfunctional family and seemed to make us appear “normal”. It was slow at the start but as it picked up, I enjoyed it immensely. The character development was great and I love how everyone had a voice in the story.
This was my first book by author Wade Rouse. I will definitely be looking at more books by him! Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the opportunity to read this book.
This was my first book by author Wade Rouse. I will definitely be looking at more books by him! Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the opportunity to read this book.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins for this advanced read of The Bluff: A Novel by Wade Rouse. Fabulous!!!! The Chapmans,The Browns do Christmas at Brigadoon and on my.. Kat and Chris Chapman are hosting Christmas, Kat has surprises for her mother-in-law, Charli and husband CS the family "royalty", Chris is barely hanging on to being the new CEO, Its a battle of the family. Kat's family the Brown's also have issues they are from the island and have a history. There's a lot going on and never a dull moment, its hard to tell everthing and not give away the story. I like Wade Rouse as he also writes under Viola Shipman. I enjoy his writing and have always found each of his books touching a well written. Read the book enjoy
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Wade Rouse always crafts a wonderful story.
Kat is in charge for Christmas this year, which is especially daunting given her in laws, who are a rich and snooty couple. Add in Kat's husband's brother, who is after his job, two teenage kids, and Kat's wonderfully sweet parents and you have a recipe for a nightmare. Kat makes her first mistake by moving the Christmas tree from it's traditional spot and adding stockings for her parents who come along. Rouse spins a great tale of a family at odds spending a holiday weekend together, but in the end, most of them have learned a lesson.
Overall a heartwarming book. I greatly enjoyed reading it even though it's not Christmas time right now. Would be a great Christmas read.
Kat is in charge for Christmas this year, which is especially daunting given her in laws, who are a rich and snooty couple. Add in Kat's husband's brother, who is after his job, two teenage kids, and Kat's wonderfully sweet parents and you have a recipe for a nightmare. Kat makes her first mistake by moving the Christmas tree from it's traditional spot and adding stockings for her parents who come along. Rouse spins a great tale of a family at odds spending a holiday weekend together, but in the end, most of them have learned a lesson.
Overall a heartwarming book. I greatly enjoyed reading it even though it's not Christmas time right now. Would be a great Christmas read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Wow! This story is a little different than what we normally get from Wade Rouse. But as usual the writing is excellent and you really know the characters by the end of the book. I also loved the setting on Mackinac Island. There is a lot to unpack here. If you’re looking for a Hallmark style Christmas book this is not it.
That’s okay! It’s realistic and I think many people experience Christmas and other holidays with family in a similar way or at least parts of it or a couple of the people in it.
Some parts of the story are heartbreaking and sad while others are full of love, forgiveness and wonderful memories.
I really enjoyed it and think others will too. Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins for an advanced readers copy in return for my honest review.
That’s okay! It’s realistic and I think many people experience Christmas and other holidays with family in a similar way or at least parts of it or a couple of the people in it.
Some parts of the story are heartbreaking and sad while others are full of love, forgiveness and wonderful memories.
I really enjoyed it and think others will too. Thank you to Netgalley and HarperCollins for an advanced readers copy in return for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This isn't your typical Christmas book and I have mixed feelings on how I feel about it. While I appreciate the author's intent to show a more real Christmas, with family drama included, I am not sure they quite accomplished that goal. The characters felt a bit one dimensional. Even though a few did have a bit of a emotional arc, there were several that had no redeeming qualities.
While I appreciated that each voice in the multi-POV felt distinct, it did the thing where scenes were repeated to show a different point of view, but not giving much more context. This made the novel feel like it dragged a bit. I did enjoy the setting of Mackinac island and the Christmas traditions.
Tropes
* Family Drama
* Multiple POVs
* Power Outage
2.5 stars
While I appreciated that each voice in the multi-POV felt distinct, it did the thing where scenes were repeated to show a different point of view, but not giving much more context. This made the novel feel like it dragged a bit. I did enjoy the setting of Mackinac island and the Christmas traditions.
Tropes
* Family Drama
* Multiple POVs
* Power Outage
2.5 stars
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I have very mixed emotions about this book. It definitely is not the type of book this author usually writes. The first part of the book is mostly mean and nasty people being mean and nasty to family members gathered together for Christmas. There are some subplots thrown in and they help the book to be a little better. I hate to admit I don’t recommend this book. It’s the first book written by this author I truly don’t like. I received a copy of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
August 30, 2026
I wanted to love this - because I love everything Wade and his alter ego Viola have ever written. However, this fell a bit flat for me. Most of the characters were horrible, terrible people and they were so over the top that if felt almost comical to me. The misogyny was also very unexpected. The premise was good, the setting was great (love me some Michigan), and it might have worked a lot better for me without the extreme stereotyping.
Many thanks for NetGalley and MIRA for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Many thanks for NetGalley and MIRA for a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Gay themed, and don’t expect a jolly Christmas read…or even a hopeful resolution to all the mayhem. This book is for politically inclined bah-humbugs who like liberal themes and all things non-traditional. If you are into dysfunction, gay themes, and a not-so-Christmas story at Christmas, then this book is right up your alley. I think it is important to note the heavy gay themes because the book description does not mention this at all, but it is prevalent and will not be enjoyed by all readers.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I received an Advanced copy of The Bluff. I love the setting of Mackinac Island in winter. I can picture the blizzard and Christmas tree on the island. The Chapman and Brown families have many differences to overcome. There are characters I loved and I few I loathed. Each member of the family has an issue to work through. I wanted to hear more about Mitch. Every marriage had a different definition of love. Add this to your reading list! Merry Christmas!
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