"maybe this should be one more bucket list item—stop obsessing about perfect to-do lists. start being a little more flexible."
This is a sweet read, which is mostly very innocent and
reads like a PG Hallmark Christmas movie. I would say it's more aimed at
pre-teens, and is a very gentle tale about a girl coming out of her shell and
finding her feet outside the safety of her books. I was fooled by the cover,
but the family dynamics here were far more interesting than the romantic drama.
Sisters Tess and Lauren go to their grandmother's ski lodge in
Vermont for the holidays while their parents work out their divorce. Tess, to
me, was pretty unlikable. She is a type A introvert, but she's also very
self-involved and gets annoying pretty quickly. I could chalk it up to her being
a teenager, but as I get older some of these thing really annoy me.
When I first started this novel I was in love. It pulled me
in immediately, I loved the feeling it gave me while I was devouring the pages.
I also really liked the festive vibes of the hotel, and I actually
finished it on New Year’s Eve.
However, as the story progressed, it took a different turn
and if I'm completely honest, it bored me with its predictability. The plot is:
the love interest, Christopher, is stuck inside with a cast and is trying to
help Tess come out of her shell by writing a check-list of bold new things she
could try by NYE. This is a fun idea and interesting in places, but makes the
book read like a checklist of cliché tropes: there’s the love-triangle, here’s
the break-up chapter, and finally there’s the make-up scene.
I think the love interest was mediocre. They got together
pretty quickly in the beginning which for me doesn’t build a lot of tension
between the characters and feels a little bland. Also, by the end, even though
I understood his reasoning later on, the male love interest was kind of a jerk?
I mean, everyone here seems to be a jerk.
I should have guessed from the beginning how immature Tess
was by her interaction with her sister, but I chalked it up to her sister just
being mean. Christopher encourages her to try new things and goes out of his
way to help. And yet the one thing he asks her to believe him about, she doubts
all because the guy flirts with her? The guy in question purposely physically
harmed Christopher but because he's all charm and niceness to Tess, she refuses
to believe it. Joke’s on her.
The plot at times can be a bit dramatic and when it comes to
that it is always a hit or miss. Here, it just made the book less desirable to
read but since it’s a short one I just pushed on. I did like the first half much
more than the last half though, as it mostly sets up this cozy atmosphere.
It was an acceptable story, but I didn't like how romance pulled
all the focus and the bigger problems were hidden under the carpet, instead of
explored. The family dynamics and relationships were not resolved to my
satisfaction.
