If anything she doubles down on it (which is always great for my romantic heart).
I also appreciate that in the quest to make Sally the heroine of the story, Ernshaw doesn’t dismiss her romantic nature or her love story with Jack. She is every inch the queen she doesn’t believe she can be. Her quest to bring down the Sandman has her using all these skills while also demonstrating true mental fortitude in pushing through alternating bouts of loneliness and anxiety all while keeping the good of her people and her loved ones in mind. In Ernshaw’s hands, she becomes so much more, and really lives up to her potential. But I get the sense to the team working on the movie, she wasn’t much more than a token girl and a love interest. There’s no denying her importance to The Nightmare Before Christmas, since it’s her movements behind the scenes that allow Jack to cause absolute chaos on Christmas unimpeded. The culprit is the mysterious Sandman, who escaped through the moon-shaped door and is roaming about unchecked.
When her curiosity gets the better of her, she falls into a short sleep and when she awakens the residents of Halloween Town - and all the other holiday towns - have been put into so deep a sleep she cannot wake them. Overwhelmed, Sally runs away into the woods and comes across a tree with a moon-shaped door, one she’s never seen before. Everything about her is declared to be wrong, while the well-meaning, if forceful, residents of Halloween Town try to mold her into their idea of what the Queen of Halloween ought to be. Things are made infinitely worse when they return home and Sally is thrust into a royal role she isn’t certain she wants. Ruby is everything Sally isn’t, and already the newly crowned Pumpkin Queen is beginning to feel the pressures of her new role at Jack’s side. While there, they take in all the sights the town has to offer - most of which involve sugar and chocolate - and even meet the queen of Valentine Town, Ruby.
Jack takes Sally to the grove of holiday trees and through the Valentine’s Day door. With Halloween only two weeks away, the couple can only take a short honeymoon, but they are certainly going to make the most of it.
The story opens immediately after the wedding of Jack Skellington and Sally, nearly a year after the end of The Nightmare Before Christmas. But one question we can settle right away is as follows: Is Shea Ernshaw’s Long Live the Pumpkin Queen a sweet, romantic read for anytime of year? The answer in short is a resounding yes. Hearing “This is Halloween” in November doesn’t ever feel quite right. I personally land on Halloween, purely because I’ve never enjoyed watching movies about a holiday after the holiday in question has ended. The age old debate is always whether The Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween or a Christmas movie.
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