Uzma Jalaluddin is an immediate read for me, but unfortunately this was the first book of hers that I didn’t love. It’s still a cute holiday romance, but I found Anna deeply annoying and didn’t feel the spark or thrill that makes a romance great from either couple. 

First Anna: She’s so unobservant, I couldn’t take her chapters seriously. How do you meet a man one night, describe his exact features on the actor in the film you watch the next morning, and then run into him just an hour later and not recognize him - especially knowing there’s a movie filming in town? Her repetitiveness about her feelings about Nick and the thoughts she’s had since the plane turbulence brought my attention to all the things she overlooked - how was she buying things without Canadian currency? Why is her room first described as so incredibly disgusting and moldy while the rest of the hotel is fine? (Especially when, somehow, Dadu manages to later get a new room to himself) How can she say one of her all-time favorite Christmas songs is "’O Tannenbaum” and doesn’t blink when Josh says his last name is Tannenbaum? The letter just magically blowing at her feet all the time?

The fact that she convinces herself to say yes to Nick when he proposes, despite only being together six months and everything readers saw him do, and then all her agency and decision making about him is completely washed out because he’s been hung up on his ex the whole time? Josh looks like the next solution to her problems, rather than Anna finding her independence and also love.

Her micro-aggressions also felt weirdly forgotten after the first third of the book.

Maryam I really liked, until about half way through the book when her chapters became repetitive. I felt for her struggle overcoming her hurt from her past relationship and breaking out of her role in her family, but there’s only so many times I could read how she didn’t want to fall in love again because it ended badly last time before I became annoyed. She claims she put her foot down with her family, but I never saw her do that until she finally had it all out with Saima. I hope she finds her happy ending, but I didn’t really feel it here. So much of her repeating her hang-ups and focusing on party planning and her career took away time I wish had been spent on her and Saif instead. 

The setting in the early 2000s was also jarring. Little about the slang/speech, pop-culture, or fashion references put me in that time period. Only when they talked about phone plans would I remember it wasn’t set in the 2020s. 

The focus on careers felt as rushed as the romances. Of course I want everything to work out at the end of a book like this, but it almost seems like because it was set during the holidays, the way everything suddenly came together was supposed to feel magical. Maybe I’m just not in the mindset for a fluffy romance right now, but I really missed the spark and butterflies I was hoping for here.