A review by lauren_shilling
All I Want for Christmas by Maggie Knox

emotional hopeful fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I am so disappointed that I didn't love this book! I absolutely adored this author duo's other book, The Holiday Swap, so I was so excited for this! Not only is it by an author duo I've loved before, but it was about a singing competition! Needless to say, I had high hopes for this book. Maybe that was why I was so let down by it, but I don't think so. I'm going to start with things that I did like, though. I really liked the relationship Sadie had with her grandmother. I thought it was super cute, and I really liked that part of the story. That being said, I saw exactly where that was going almost immediately, so there was no shock there at all. I also thought the book started off pretty good. At the beginning, I was very hopeful that this might be another five star  from this author duo. However, it became clear that this would not be the case by the end of the first 70 pages, probably. I also enjoyed the dog, but that is mostly because I love dogs, and dogs that wear sweaters are some of my favorite things ever. I wish we saw more of the dog, honestly, but I also understand why we didn't. Those were my two biggest positives about the book. Other than those things, there wasn't much I liked. I found the characters to be very flat, or even downright unlikeable. Sadie was a fine character, and I really liked her at first, but as the story progressed, I just didn't feel like she was ever particularly fleshed out, and ended up falling flat for me. This made me really sad because, like I said, I really liked her and where her character appeared to be going at first. I really did not like Max, though. In the first part of the book, I thought he was cute and I didn't dislike him. He just wasn't my favorite love interest, which is fine. I usually don't mind not absolutely falling in love with characters in romance novels as long as I can see the chemistry between the characters. However, as the book progressed, I began to find that I actually just do not like him at all. He just continuously ran away from his problems and expected the pieces to just fall right into place for him later, with little regard to how it would impact and hurt others around him. He was really privileged, and while he would say he acknowledged that privilege and didn't want it to define him or to always rely on it, in my opinion, he never acted like any of that was true. If he had only done this once or twice and then showed some real character development, this would not be an issue for me and I would have liked him a lot more, but he acted this way constantly throughout the book. Sadie, or anyone else, did not deserve to be treated the way he treated her over and over again. Then there was also the issue that the ending felt rushed, and we were expected to believe that all of those pieces would just fall into place the way they did so quickly. It bothered me a lot. I also found none of the side characters to be particularly interesting either. I was also annoyed at how little the singing competition was actually in the book. The premise made it sound like the book was going to be entirely based around the competition, but the competition itself ends about 150 pages into the book. This really disappointed me, because it felt really rushed, and honestly, it felt unnecessary to the plot, or their developing relationship. I was hoping the stakes of the competition would feel higher and that it would be more prevalent in the story. I'm gonna get into some spoilers now to talk about something else I didn't like about the book.
One of the things going on in this book is that a producer has taken interest in Sadie, and not really for her musical talent. He does a lot of creepy things, and harasses her quite a bit. I feel like this was not handled with much care, and it was treated as a plot device to create drama in the relationship. Not only am I disappointed that this topic was handled like that, but it made me dislike Max more for the way he reacted when faced with something he should have thought about more than he did. Instead, he made assumptions, and it came off as really insensitive./spoiler>
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