I am a firm believer in the idea of meeting a book where it’s at. I don’t go into certain genres expecting them to be the highest quality of literary fiction. When I go into a romance novel of any type, I am keeping in mind what can be expected from that and mostly comparing it to other romance novels I have read. So when I say that this book irritated me and was not good, know that I am not being overly critical of it because of it being a cheesy holiday romance. That is exactly what I wanted from this book, but what I got was cringey, annoying, and didn’t make sense.
Let’s start off with the MMC. To be fair on this count, part of my dislike for his character may stem from the fact that the female audiobook narrator, especially when doing his parts, was not good. Nevertheless, I do still think that much of his dialogue was awkward and unnecessarily pretentious. As someone who is actually attracted to intelligence in another person, I found his way of speaking to be so gratingly pompous. And the thing is, it wasn’t even consistent. In the chapters from his perspective, his dialogue and inner monologue were not like that. It just made it even more insufferable in her chapters to hear him speak like that as if he was trying to be impressive. Also, some of his romantic lines were so cheesy and bad that it made me cringe.

Okay, onto the FMC. Maybe these two were meant for each other, because she was also incredibly annoying. When we first meet her, she is so hung up on herself and thinking she is hot sh*t at the trivia game, but I would have been happy to see her taken down a peg or two, if it hadn’t been done by the MMC with his snobbishness. She does get better over the course of the book, until the very end, where she takes a horrible nose dive. I’ll admit here that one of my least favorite tropes in a romance novel is a third act breakup, so I may be a bit biased, but I found this to be the most unnecessary one that I’ve ever come across. In the middle of it, the FMC fully recognizes that her reaction is born of her insecurities, and yet she leans into the break up. I might still be able to forgive this, however, her changing her mind and making the shift in her mentality to allow them to be together, happens completely off page. In other words, the break up was completely unnecessary and a waste of time, which made it all the more egregious to me.

Finally, I have to address that this book just makes no sense. I am fine with overlooking the fantastical and magical elements that are at play in the book, especially with it being a holiday romance. However, there were so many times where things just didn’t add up. The one that stands out the most for me was when the MMC and FMC decide to walk out into a blizzard to find their friends’ car that was stranded, and decide to tie a rope to the house to use as a way to guide them back. How long is this rope? How far away is the car? What is the thought process behind this? You might as well go full on Hansel and Gretel and just leave the trail of food behind you for how effective that would be.

The only stars go to the Bookish Bitches for being funny old ladies with a great sense of humor and personalized shirts.