The 12 Books of Christmas: Countdown to Christmas by Jo Thomas

youngcreativepress

2 years ago

Synopsis:

Chloe can’t wait for Christmas . . . to be over! Her son Ruben is staying with his dad this year and Chloe is planning to ignore the holidays all together. Her only nod to the season is the advent calendar Ruben left her, to help count down the days till he’s home again.

But then an heir hunter gets in touch, telling her there’s a plot of land in Canada she may be entitled to. Surely, it’s a scam. Or could it be just the escape she needs right now? They’re offering to pay for her flights . . . and Ruben’s latest note in the advent calendar tells her to ‘say yes!’

Suddenly, Chloe’s new countdown to Christmas involves a log cabin in the middle of a snowy forest, a community that’s worried for its future, a gruff lumberjack who gives her butterflies and a lot of pancakes with maple syrup . . .

This Christmas is full of surprises!

Review:

It’s sad to say, but I’m quite sure Jo Thomas’ books are not for me. Once again this was pretty mediocre and the characters were very one-dimensional.

Chloe’s only purpose in life and personality trait was her son, which fair enough she’s a single mom, but it would have been great to actually learn more about her other than that she has a 12 year old and likes to bake cakes.

Don’t get me started on her love interest. Theo is your typical romance love interest; tall, incredibly handsome and has zero personality. Honestly, the best characters in this entire book were Oceane, who is a child, Bea who was stubborn and excitable but was only really there to be pregnant and Ike, a turkey.

It took so long for me to really get into the flow of the story and I hate to say it, but the majority of Countdown to Christmas was boring. There was no real conflict, only a tiny section at the end and even the whole ‘my new lover’s ex-wife is here and she’s mean’ bit didn’t even land. She was mean to everyone, not just Chloe.

Once I got into the story it wasn’t as boring, but I feel like so much more could have been done for the Christmas aspect of this book. You only get to hear about most of the events in passing and it really missed that festive spark. Christmas day only lasted about five pages and quite a lot of the build-up is skipped in time jumps.

I can’t quite put my finger on what I actually liked about this book. It was a pretty quick read and it wasn’t completely terrible, but looking at it from an analytical point of view, it was painfully average.