*I was given an ARC of Every Christmas Eve in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Penguin Random House and Emma Heatherington for my copy of the book*
Synopsis:
Lou and Ben fell in love as teenagers at the Ballyheaney Christmas Eve party. Every winter, they saved the date for each other. Until everything changed one fateful night…
Now, after years away, widower Ben and his young daughter are back, determined to revive the legendary party. But with only two weeks to make it happen, they need help. So Ben turns to the one person he could never, Lou.
As the days tick down to another Christmas Eve together, old feelings and memories resurface. Will Lou and Ben seize this chance to rewrite their very own love story?
Review:
I’m not entirely sure what I thought of Every Christmas Eve. I enjoyed it enough to finish it, but I wouldn’t say I loved it. The cast of characters were lovely and the setting was great, but the spark wasn’t there for me.
Speaking of a lack of spark, I wasn’t fully sold on Lou and Ben’s relationship. Well, not as adults anyway. I really enjoyed the flashback scenes and getting to witness their relationship grow from delivering a foal on the first Christmas Eve to meeting up every Christmas Eve to pick up where they left off. Unfortunately, when they meet again the spark just wasn’t there for me. I think if we’d spent more time developing their adult relationship I would have been more on board, but you’re basically just told you should want them together because they had a connection when they were younger.
Saying that, I didn’t hate them together in the present day. I just think they jumped back into it a little too quickly. Having such a long and emotional past definitely helped make this relationship more realistic but I just wasn’t really feeling it.
The setting was really quite lovely though. I love a festive romance set at a stately home. The descriptions of the festivities were some of my favourite parts of the book. They sounded so magical and I couldn’t only imagine how wonderful it would be to grow up in a small village with an annual Christmas Eve party.
Sorry for such a short review. I finished reading Every Christmas Eve quite a while ago and left it weeks before writing this review. I’d say this is a very decent read that has some lovely moments but it wasn’t quite for me.
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