Scan barcode
A review by saschadarlington
Christmas at Strand House by Linda Mitchelmore
3.0
Honestly, I expected more from Christmas at Strand House by Linda Mitchelmore from reading the blurb. It sounds like the perfect read with four lonely people, each with a tantalizing secret, spending Christmas in a huge, lovely home.
The secrets turn out to be not so tantalizing; the descriptions of the food, however, are.
The novel is so ripe with possibilities that never quite come to fruition. And, I found it marred by an incident early on when both Lissy and Xander, separately, recall an intoxicated dance at Xander and Claire’s wedding in which they had a moment, a moment of “what could have been.” I suppose that the author thought this would be romantic having the new husband and the wife’s best friend have that moment so that they had a foundation for this future romance, but I found it sad, and it unsettled the remainder of the novel for me because it so was unromantic. Idealistically I would have preferred that the new husband be totally and absolutely, head-over-heels in love with his new wife.
Christmas at Strand House has little drama. What does occur are misunderstandings via dialogue and then drawn out apologies. There’s a lot of repetition due to this.
Despite the setting and Christmas frivolity, Christmas at Strand House never moves beyond that for me. I never really came to care about the characters, and ultimately I just wished something would happen.
This is a case of YMMV (your-mileage-may-vary) because it has lots of love on Goodreads.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
The secrets turn out to be not so tantalizing; the descriptions of the food, however, are.
The novel is so ripe with possibilities that never quite come to fruition. And, I found it marred by an incident early on when both Lissy and Xander, separately, recall an intoxicated dance at Xander and Claire’s wedding in which they had a moment, a moment of “what could have been.” I suppose that the author thought this would be romantic having the new husband and the wife’s best friend have that moment so that they had a foundation for this future romance, but I found it sad, and it unsettled the remainder of the novel for me because it so was unromantic. Idealistically I would have preferred that the new husband be totally and absolutely, head-over-heels in love with his new wife.
Christmas at Strand House has little drama. What does occur are misunderstandings via dialogue and then drawn out apologies. There’s a lot of repetition due to this.
Despite the setting and Christmas frivolity, Christmas at Strand House never moves beyond that for me. I never really came to care about the characters, and ultimately I just wished something would happen.
This is a case of YMMV (your-mileage-may-vary) because it has lots of love on Goodreads.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.