Publisher: YLVA Publishing
Fiona is stuck spending Christmas weekend with the McElroy family. Her best friend, Michael, has convinced her to go home and pretend to be his girlfriend because he is tried of hearing his family hound him about finding someone.
The McElroy family is large. A grandma, some parents, and a slew of children (Two sets of twins, even), and a cat. The cat is a ginger, just like the rest of the clan.
There is a lot I liked about this book. It was a romantic comedy. Infused with humor and most of it hit it’s mark. I laughed out loud at Michael and Fiona’s banter about her height. The McElroy’s family traditions that put Fiona in several comical situations. The best friend relationship between Michael and Fiona was goals. The tension and will/they wont/they between Fiona and Michael’s sister, Lizzie, was exciting.
This also had a tiny focus on racism. Fiona is a mixed Asian woman and grandma McElroy made some pretty infuriating comments. There was some internal thoughts about always trying to make other people feel comfortable about their racism was interesting. And I also just flat out liked that the lead was Asian. There is not enough diversity in lesbian fiction.
On the flip side, there were a couple of things that I didn’t quite care for about the book. Casual pot smoking. I’m no prude about this, but it just seemed out of place in this cute romance. The couple of references took me out of the story. The first sexual encounter was fairly jarring. Like skip zero and go directly to 1000. It wasn’t sweet, and that made me not really care about their budding relationship as much. It had more of a hookup vibe to me and I had the feeling that they wouldn’t last beyond Lizzie going back home to LA.
I do love this author, though. Her first two books are favorites of mine. I think the difference is that those were more drama and angst and this is humor and holiday. She is a great writer but I did not agree with the two story choices mentioned above. And that is too bad, because just a couple different decisions and this would have been a 5 for me.
But I can and do recommend this book to those who enjoy holidays, romances, best friends, family traditions, red heads, freckles, and heterochromia.