Book Club December 2022- Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

This review is going to be slightly different than my typical format. Between the holidays and a short vacation, I just didn’t have as much time as I usually do but I still wanted to put up a quick review since we had book club.

I didn’t like this book at all. Like, so much so that I feel like I can’t talk about it. I found the writing to be extremely boring and I didn’t connect with anything. I didn’t like the characters and found the setting to be bland. It was so predictable (which, I know most romance novels are, but something about this one bothered me) and I ended up skimming the last 100 pages because I just couldn’t do it anymore.

Now, I will say that I know some of it is due to me issues. Such as, there is a suicide storyline that ends up being pretty central to the plot that was difficult for me to read. I also hate insta-love, and even though Nory and Isaac had a history from school, they hadn’t seen each other in almost 20 years and it seemed like they instantly fell in love. I just couldn’t buy into it. I also had some major issues with the characters in general.

Interestingly, we were split 50/50 on this book. I thought for sure I was going to be the only one who disliked it, but another book club member ended up disliking it too. Two other members loved it and tried to bring up some redeeming qualities, but I was probably a little bit of a downer (or curmudgeon as one of our members used in describing the book) and kept just saying why I didn’t like what they did. I did try to listen to what it was that they liked about the book, but it definitely wasn’t anything that would change my mind or make me see the book in another light.

Personally, I can’t recommend this book. But oddly, since two of my friends loved it, I’m sure they would. I don’t love bashing books, which is why I don’t want to keep going on about this one, but it was such a miss for me. I will say, if you are planning on checking this book out, don’t expect it to be a Christmas novel. We all agreed that Christmas was not a central character to the story and that it didn’t have a Christmas feel at all.