Believe it or not, this is the LAST of my 2021 reviews!! Woohoo!!! Usually I try to divide my reviews up evenly, but for some reason I just wasn’t paying attention and ended up with only two reviews for this one! Part of it is because the last book I read in 2021 was the first book in a series, so I’m going to add it to my January reviews, when I read the rest of the series. Whoops. I also can’t believe how close I was to finishing the 2021 reviews before the end of January, but then dropped the ball!!! But here they are, before mid-February, anyway, so that’s something!
Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough. Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it! Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up. For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.
Faking Under the Mistletoe by Ashley Shepherd – 3.5*
//published 2019//
I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, I actually really liked the characters and the banter was great. On the other hand, the book felt overly long and somewhat unfocused. There’s also the whole dating-your-supervisor thing that felt weird, and then the book made a sudden turn away from fluffy romcom into sexual assault/MeToo territory. I was so confused because there was a point where Olivia literally has JUST BEEN TOLD that a male character is a known sexual predator, and then she just wanders off with him and ends up in a dangerous situation?!!? Like why did she go with him?!?! And it wasn’t sneaky, he’s basically like, “you should come sit with me in this isolated spot“ and she thinks “oh this guy is really bad and keeps getting away with it because he’s a horrible person“ and then says, “oh, okay!“ and goes with him!?!?!?
Also, even though this book is listed as a standalone, it apparently has characters from Shepherd’s first book, and she doesn’t do a very good job at explaining them or their relationships to one another, so I felt myself floundering a bit at time because of the complete lack of background information.
Still, there were so many moments were this book made me snort with laughter and I really did ship the main characters completely. I think this one would have benefitting from another editing round to tighten it up, but I can also see myself checking out Shepherd’s other book.
The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson – 3*
I’m sure I’ve read this original story at some point, but I really couldn’t remember it, and wow was it weird. However, I have a lovely edition that includes several other fairy tales, so that part was fun lol It was interesting to read this original tale since I’ve read variations and adaptations of it, but I did find it confusing when the story just seemed to wander away from the main plot. Plus, I never exactly understood what the Snow Queen’s motivation was. Still an interesting story and the edition I read had lots of fun illustrations.
The Aroma of Books 