I haven’t done one of these book reviews in ages and thought that since I have had the chance to read a good handful of books over the last few weeks of 2017, that this would be a good time to restart this series. I love writing book reviews but as I have let myself go in the last few months of 2017, I actually haven’t read enough to write anything. So this year, I’m hoping to read more and aiming for at least a fortnightly Sunday Book Club post.
Anyway, today’s review is on Cold Feet at Christmas by Debbie Johnson. I’ve read a couple of her “… … Comfort Food Cafe” series – one of which I’ve loved reading, another that I absolutely hated – so it was a 50/50 toss up and I thought I’d give this chance. I love reading chick-lit during the holiday season because they are meant to be easy reads, not much thinking, and usually cheerful with a happy ending – how can it be bad?
But boy, was I wrong. I absolutely hated the book. I knew it was going to be chick-lit from the start, so my expectations were already very low. But it is terrible – far worse than I could ever expect. I felt like screaming with frustration over how crap it was every few pages but I’m not one to quit a book halfway so I, after a lot of pain, finished it.
**This part of the review consist of Spoilers
Leah has just run away from her wedding, because just before she was to take her vows, she caught her husband-to-be bonking her bridesmaid. So she fled in her wedding gown in the middle of a snow storm and in the middle of nowhere in Scotland without taking anything with her. Her car broke down, her phone ran out of battery, and it was freezing cold so she decided to walk to the light in the distance to ask for help.
As it happens, Rob – an extremely rich and hot guy – is hiding out in the cabin because that’s what he does every Christmas to avoid his family asking him to find someone. He opens the door, only to have her calling him “Jesus” before passing out on him. When she wakes up, since they are two very ridiculously attractive people stuck together in a cabin, they decided to have a lot of hot sex which is explicitly and extensively laid out.
It was just sex though, because Rob has a past that he doesn’t want to talk about and he is so “broken” that he cannot love again. When the snow thaws, Rob asks Leah to go to Chicago with him – not as a lover as they have to be just friends, so that she can have a new start in life. She agrees and off they go to Chicago where she discovers just how rich he is, with a twin brother and an overbearing mother who is trying to get him to find love again.
However, Leah has fallen in love with Rob but he keeps pushing her away because he is a “broken man”. In the end, it turns out that his wife (and unborn child) was killed by a car because he was too busy working on Christmas so he asked her to go out and pick up her own gift, as well as for the rest of the family so he blamed himself for her death. Leah has her own sad past too – when she was eighteen, she told her parents to go away for the weekend so she could celebrate her birthday; they did and died in a fire in the hotel.
Leah leaves the US, because of “irregularities” on her work visa and secretly pregnant with Rob’s child. A few months later, Rob comes to London to find her – to tell her that he is in love with her and wants to marry her. He finds out that she’s heavily pregnant with his child and asks for a chance to make everything up to her and the child – which she agrees.
Final Thoughts
Seriously, this book just reads like a 50-shades-of-grey-wannabe. 50% of the book is about the details of the sex between Leah and Rob. There is no plot. It’s just a book about two random people having sex with each other – mind you, one of them just ran away from her wedding and decided that the first thing she would do is have a lot of sex with a stranger.
I also absolutely hate the characters. I wanted to scream every time mopey-Rob claims that he is a “broken man” – I can’t imagine anyone talking like that. It’s so badly dramatized. Leah just sounds like an absolute bimbotic airhead, who doesn’t think before she talks, which apparently the author thought would sound like a cute little endearing trait (but it’s not because it’s not funny or cute, just very stupid). I don’t mind stupid characters so much but they should at least have one nice factor to them, in this case I couldn’t find any.
For your own sanity, I highly recommend you to STAY AWAY from this book. I got it for US$1.99 on Kindle and I think there are much better ways to throw away 2 bucks on. This did not deserve my 2 bucks. It was a pain to read, there was no plot, and it feels like it was written in desperation by the author to put another book out no matter what. Everyone within a 5-metre radius around me also suffered as a result as I couldn’t help ranting loudly about how bad this was – so don’t say that I didn’t warn you.
The Good Life Bunny 