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wordsofclover 's review for:
The Christmas Swap
by Sandy Barker
Chloe, Lucy and Jules met as 11-year-old girls on family holidays in Maui, and from then on The May Ladies was born. After years of friendship, and traveling the world on various girly holidays, the girls decide to switch up Christmas by swapping households for the season. Chloe stays with Lucy's family in a small English visit - and finds out the boy next door is a famous movie star, while Lucy travels to Colorado and realises that Jules's little brother Will is all grown up. And Jules swaps snow for sand for the land down under, and falls in love with more than just Melbourne.
This is a fun novel with an enjoyable aspect - who wouldn't want to swap Christmases one year and see how other people do it. I loved, in particular, the Colorado Christmas as that's the one I would like the most - snow, cabin, hot chocolate - bliss!
It goes with no saying that if you like the movie The Holiday you would like this book, as it's a similar concept. However, in saying that I do think there were way too many mentions and references to the actual movie in this novel - to the point where the characters were saying which characters they would be in the movie.
While the book was cute and nice, I do think it was a little bit flat because nothing really happened to be honest, and after 50% through I grew really bored of it. Contemporaries are known to have those dramatic moments that make the couple split up, and they get back together at the end but nothing that like happened in this book (so if you hate that trope maybe you would like this one). I actually would have liked a bit of drama to shake things up. All the downs in the book were very small scale and boring, and borderline petty. And all of the love interests were just so gorgeous, and perfect and it felt unbelievable that there wasn't one dud among them. The girls also felt much younger than they were - I kept thinking they were about 25 years old but they were actually 33.
I also was really disappointed that the author did not take the opportunity to have one of these girls be a queer character, and for one of the romances in this book be a Christmassy gay one! I would have loved that.
This is a fun novel with an enjoyable aspect - who wouldn't want to swap Christmases one year and see how other people do it. I loved, in particular, the Colorado Christmas as that's the one I would like the most - snow, cabin, hot chocolate - bliss!
It goes with no saying that if you like the movie The Holiday you would like this book, as it's a similar concept. However, in saying that I do think there were way too many mentions and references to the actual movie in this novel - to the point where the characters were saying which characters they would be in the movie.
While the book was cute and nice, I do think it was a little bit flat because nothing really happened to be honest, and after 50% through I grew really bored of it. Contemporaries are known to have those dramatic moments that make the couple split up, and they get back together at the end but nothing that like happened in this book (so if you hate that trope maybe you would like this one). I actually would have liked a bit of drama to shake things up. All the downs in the book were very small scale and boring, and borderline petty. And all of the love interests were just so gorgeous, and perfect and it felt unbelievable that there wasn't one dud among them. The girls also felt much younger than they were - I kept thinking they were about 25 years old but they were actually 33.
I also was really disappointed that the author did not take the opportunity to have one of these girls be a queer character, and for one of the romances in this book be a Christmassy gay one! I would have loved that.