The 12 Books of Christmas: Christmas Is All Around by Martha Waters

youngcreativepress

1 year ago

Synopsis:

A former child star learns that holiday magic can come from a change in perspective in this charming and hilarious holiday rom-com.

Charlotte hates the holidays. As a former child actress, she starred in a modern classic of a holiday movie, and its fans won’t let her move on. When a piece revealing that her reluctance nixed plans for a reboot, she flees to London to spend the five-week countdown to the holidays with her sister.

But the ghosts of Christmas past follow her there when she ends up at Eden Priory, a filming location for the movie she has never visited. There, after being recognized by a fan while viewing the extraordinary holiday decorations, she’s accidently left behind, forcing her to accept a ride back to London by Graham, the son of the owners. Their family business—and the funds to keep their historic house running—relies on holiday cheer, and Graham knows a visit from a holiday star would bring in more visitors.

Now an illustrator, Charlotte accepts a commission illustrating iconic holiday movie scenes in London and its environs. Graham offers to help escort her, as long as she’ll commit to an art workshop at Eden Priory. But as Charlotte’s chaotic family holiday goes awry, she begins spending more time scouting locations with Graham. Charlotte may not love Christmas, but is it so bad if you’re also falling in love?

Review:

For a book that was supposedly less than 250 pages long, Christmas is All Around really dragged. My initial disappointment with this book came when I realised it was categorised wrong on NetGalley and it isn’t in fact a graphic novel. I’ve never read a Christmas graphic novel before so I was really excited when this popped up. But never mind, seeing that it was fairly short made up for it. Unfortunately it wasn’t the quick read I was hoping for.

Christmas Is All Around would have been much more Christmassy if every single festive event wasn’t skirted over. Every time it was a case of “we’re going to do this Christmas-related thing that would probably make for an entertaining section of this book” which would then skip straight to “so that thing happened, here’s absolutely no detail about it but you get to hear more of Charlotte complaining about how much she hates Christmas”. This whining got old very quickly and made Charlotte quite unlikable. Her attitude towards Christmas could have been excused but this extended towards her family and honestly, she was just plain mean sometimes. She constantly referred to her niece with horrible names or descriptions. I get that she doesn’t want kids herself, I feel you there, but I’m not a child hater or judge people that do want children.

Charlotte likes to remind the reader that she’s not ‘the artist type that is a burden to their friends and family’ but she seemed to have conflict with everyone in her life. She may not have been a burden financially but she clearly had a lot of unresolved issues that, in the grand scheme of the book, were there just to spice things up a bit. Don’t even get me started on how horrible she is to Graham and he just takes it the whole time. I did like him, but that’s because he had no flaws and as a by-product of that, no personality.

I’m also so over the ‘the main character hates Christmas and this makes them think they’re better than everyone else’ trope that appears far too often in festive romances. At first I found it refreshing when it was the female character that felt that way, but not anymore. It’s overused and takes the joy out of what could be lovely books.

Ok, no more complaining about Charlotte, I don’t want this review to be purely negative.

The parts that I did like will take no time at all to talk about, so I will be using them to close this review. London at Christmas is always wonderful to hear about. I used to visit London at Christmas when I was younger so a few parts of this felt nostalgic, but as I mentioned at the start, all festive events are skirted over. I also really loved the supporting cast of characters. They had a lot of personality and made Christmas Is All Around a much more readable experience. Ava, Charlotte’s sister, was definitely my favourite. She was no nonsense but also hilarious. I’d much rather read a story about her and her husband Kit.

Christmas Is All Around was unfortunately, disappointment after disappointment for me. The story drags on for much longer than needed and an unlikable main character really sours the whole experience.