*I was given an ARC of Stuck Together in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Bookouture and Lily Joseph for my copy of the book*
Synopsis:
The hate is real. So is the chemistry.
Annie is heading into the holidays alone. And as a confirmed singleton, she decides to open a shop selling the kind of treats every single woman would want to find under the tree. After all, who doesn’t like to get a ‘Premium Sensual Lifestyle Product’ for Christmas, right?
Penn is in a bind. He needs to come home for Christmas with a girl, or his parents will set him up with someone ‘suitable’. Nothing is too good for the Honourable Peregrine Burton-Edwards after all. But that’s not what Penn wants. He just wants to sell vintage records in his shop and meet a nice, normal girl.
The first time Annie and Penn meet, Annie feels a flutter in her chest – he’s tall, dark and handsome, with cheekbones you could sharpen a blade on. So when he offers to share the shop with her to save on rent, she gladly accepts.
Huge mistake… Annie and Penn are poles apart and butt heads at every turn. But with the holidays looming, Penn will soon need to ask for a big favour, and Annie, with no plans to speak of, is the only girl who can help. As the arguments get more heated, so do the sparks flying between them. Will they put their differences aside and come together? And could it be for more than just Christmas?
Review:
Stuck Together was an okay read – I didn’t hate it but I also didn’t love it. I loved the concept of two people who don’t get on having to share a shop around Christmas. It’s a fun idea and the moments in the shop were some of the best of the entire book. The music war in particular was great, but it did leave me wondering just how annoying two different songs of any volume playing at the same time in an enclosed space would be.
I’m usually a fan of opposites attract but I’m getting tired of this being a class divide, especially when the female main character is the working class one. Rude middle to upper class male characters are getting real old now. Penn wasn’t the worst as he wanted nothing to do with his upper class family but he was rude.
For something that was marketed as a ‘festive’ romance, Stuck Together wasn’t very Christmassy. There were a few moments that made me feel festive but this could have been set any time of year and it wouldn’t have changed any of the events. It was also a weird mix of romance and cosy mystery with neither genre taking centre stage. The mystery part took so many twists, you think they have the culprit multiple times and when you do find out who it is, it’s a little ridiculous. It’s fairly clever as you wouldn’t suspect the person, but that also makes it kind of far fetched.
The romance was ok but I think having Penn’s POV would have been highly beneficial. I’d happily forget the mystery part if it meant the romance could have been stronger. Only getting to understand Penn through Annie’s perspective did him no favours and I love hearing about how the stubborn rude male character actually really likes the woman he claims to dislike.
This has been a fairly negative review, which I wasn’t expecting as I did enjoy reading Stuck Together, but the bad parts outweigh the good when it comes to reviewing. When you don’t particularly like any of the characters (other than Annie’s parents) there’s not a lot of good things you can say. I did like the settings though and the concept was great – just not greatly executed for my personal tastes.
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Like this post? Why not read this one too: The 12 Books of Christmas: The Christmas Cottage by Sarah Morgan
[…] Like this post? Why not read this one too: The 12 Books of Christmas: Stuck Together by Lily Joseph […]