St. Martin’s Press – …on the B.L.

Worth A Read Meh
Length 288
Quick Review Two women spend Christmas in London to make a cooking show, and their lives find new purposes.

wp-1578169065977 — Christmas in London by Anita Hughes at Levy Park in Houston. | Green Dress | Red Heels | Sapphire Necklace | Sapphire Earrings | Fossil Watch | Pearl Bracelets |

Christmas in London by Anita Hughes has a lot of things you want in a Christmas story, but it falls short in just as many ways.

Louisa is a small time pastry chef working in New York City. Kate is a producer for a local cooking show. They spend Christmas in London to be a part of a holiday cooking show. Louisa grows close to an assistant from New York, and Kate revisits people from her past.

I’m fairly ambivalent about this book. It’s not bad. It’s definitely not great, but it’s what people want and expect during the holidays. Loads of ridiculous romantic stuff and drama for no reason. Hughes writes in the third person and switches between Louisa and Kates’s point of views throughout Christmas in London. It’s mostly told in the present, except for when Kate has flashbacks to the past for a muddy subplot. Honestly, the writing is really boring and cliché. There is an abundance of similes. Hughes is overly descriptive to the point of monotony. It became so repetitive when as the narrative said in one way or another “a man showed up and she realized it was Trevor/Noah.” Yuck. It doesn’t build suspense. It’s just boring and a waste of ink.

I could get past the writing if the characters were more believable or even likable. Louisa and her love interest felt like they were in high school more than adults starting out in a romantic relationship. Kate is more mature but not by a lot. I have a hard time identifying with adults in relationships who are completely lacking in mature communication skills. At the same time, their conflict resolution comes far too easily after they’ve bungled the whole situation from poor communication skills. They’re also not very likable. The parallels drawn between Louisa and Kate are not subtle; they’re basically living the same story arc.The male characters are the worst. Honestly, I don’t know why either woman put up with it? No man is better than any man.

Anita Hughes’ Christmas in London is a decent mindless read to keep you busy instead of spending time with the in-laws or family. It’s not great, but it could be a lot worse.

Memorable Quotes
““But there isn’t time to be passionate about more than one thing. If you want something in life, you have to sacrifice everything else to get it.””
“She had never been able to separate love and attraction.”
“That was the problem with sex; it made it impossible to think.”

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Title: Christmas in London
Author: Anita Hughes
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781250145796

Read: No
Length: 394
Quick Review: Meredith and Nina think their old, Russian mother hates them, but on their father’s death bed everything changes. A mother-daughter mystery couldn’t be more generic.

As a Russian speaker… This book was incredibly painful to read. As an English speaker… I found it mundane and common at best.

Meredith and Nina are sisters following vastly different paths. Meredith stayed home to help run the family business as her father aged. Nina left for adventures as a photographer. Their childhood was marked by a father’s unconditional love and their mother’s frigidity. A fairy tale they heard as children transformed into something meaningful to their mother and their own lives after their father dies suddenly.

Hannah tries to build a beautiful picture in the reader’s mind, but falls short as she uses too many unnecessary adjectives giving the narrative a clunky, arbitrary feel. Her efforts feel amateurish as she becomes overly repetitive. When she refines her language, everything flows better, but these moments are fleeting throughout the almost four hundred pages.

The characters come off as flat, grating, unempathetic, and overly stupid. Spoiler: The mother is an elderly, Russian woman with a heavy accent. The plot takes place in 2001. If I could VERY easily do the math: Woman. 80 ish years of age. Her heavy accent means she did not leave Russia as a child but an adult. Even if she moved to the US as a 23 year old woman, she would have been in Russia during WWII… Which explains all of her behavior. So… In the 37 and 40 years her daughters had with her, they didn’t even think about her life before them. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for adult characters who live in me-me-me land, which is exactly what the main characters here do. Not to mention their inability to view the “fairy tale” as an allegory for their mother’s life. As children, all of these things are excusable, but as adult characters it’s surprising and not believable.

Hannah has an obsession with “unconditional” love throughout the narrative. Every time the word “love” is used it is almost always in conjunction with “unconditional.” It just irritated me. After the first few times, she could have dropped the word since she was referring to family and not an “unconditional love” of dirt.

All in all, the book was a waste of my time. I had the plot guessed in detail within the first thirty pages. It’s a formulaic mother-daughter relationship story with an even more uninspired mystery for good measure. As a non-Russian speaker, I would have been able to forgive her, but I’m not that. She fell short. It’s a lesson in how one should only write about languages they’re familiar with.

Memorable Quotes:

“She had thought she was full grown then.”
“”A woman can be a girl and still know her own heart.””

Title: Winter Garden
Author: Kristin Hannah
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Copyright: 2010
ISBN: 9781615239498