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A review by thingslucyreads
All I Want For Christmas by Clare Lydon
3.0
Eh. It was okay on balance I guess. More like a 2.7/5. Here’s some more thoughts, vaguely organised:
The characters don’t have any continuity when it comes to emotions or emotional reactions to other people or situations. Not in a real-people-are-messy kind of way, in a this-writing-is-messy kind of way. It’s constant whiplash because the characterisations aren’t steady. Like the book was written scene by scene without examining how those characters interacted previously. It also did the typical Lesfic™️ thing and totally erased bisexuality, which sucked; and everyone was extremely judgemental, often about looks, which also sucked; Holly and Victoria continually referred to one of their friends as being “crazy” which ALSO sucked; but there was a fairly well-sized collection of queer characters which was a nice change from a lot of ones I’ve read, where everyone is the Token Queer in their life and they associate mainly with non-queers.
The most annoying thing about this for me was a bunch of little clumsy mistakes: like the absolute statement about pre-teen kissing, froth on flat whites, mistaking the trachea for the oesophagus, a professor at Oxford dressing like a hippie fortune teller at a carnival and that this was something she “learned at professor school” — that one especially sounds fake. (Most of these were expanded upon in my reading updates.) In Once Upon A Princess it was chipped plates and mugs being constantly reused in a cafe like that was fine and not a major health code violation. The whole time I was reading I was like, where is the editor?? Why is no one checking the little things, there’s SO MANY small inaccuracies but they add up until it seems not only clumsy but lazy. There’s nothing wrong with the grammar but it needs, idk, life-picking, the way fanfics of British media by Americans often need Britpicking.
Also, it seems none of Clare Lydon’s main characters can look at any attractive women without getting aroused; that’s a whole thing. Twitching clits and rushing between the legs and descriptions of breasts on what feels like every second page, and that also doesn’t feel very realistic. Maybe I’m wrong, but I just roll my eyes every time it happens. And while we’re on the topic of unrealistic: the resolution of Victoria’s love life woes was all at once predictable, unbelievable, ridiculous and fitting. I can’t decide how I feel about it even though I called it halfway. Like there wasn’t enough lead up but any more would have been TOO obvious. It’s usually one of my favourite tropes but it just wasn’t executed very well because there was too much other shit going on at the same time.
It was good that Holly called Victoria out on the fact that she constantly made absolutely terrible decisions that only led to more drama, and it was a conversation that should have led to character development, but we didn’t really see any because of the turns the plot took afterwards.
Anyway. Contrary to appearances, I didn’t hate reading this one. It was a bit of a chore by the end when I could see how everything was going to turn out and I was just waiting to get there but it wasn’t hard to read. And for once an author actually wrote believable dialogue, and the banter was great. But I don’t think Clare Lydon is for me and I won’t be reading any of her other books because I don’t really actually enjoy them.
The characters don’t have any continuity when it comes to emotions or emotional reactions to other people or situations. Not in a real-people-are-messy kind of way, in a this-writing-is-messy kind of way. It’s constant whiplash because the characterisations aren’t steady. Like the book was written scene by scene without examining how those characters interacted previously. It also did the typical Lesfic™️ thing and totally erased bisexuality, which sucked; and everyone was extremely judgemental, often about looks, which also sucked; Holly and Victoria continually referred to one of their friends as being “crazy” which ALSO sucked; but there was a fairly well-sized collection of queer characters which was a nice change from a lot of ones I’ve read, where everyone is the Token Queer in their life and they associate mainly with non-queers.
The most annoying thing about this for me was a bunch of little clumsy mistakes: like the absolute statement about pre-teen kissing, froth on flat whites, mistaking the trachea for the oesophagus, a professor at Oxford dressing like a hippie fortune teller at a carnival and that this was something she “learned at professor school” — that one especially sounds fake. (Most of these were expanded upon in my reading updates.) In Once Upon A Princess it was chipped plates and mugs being constantly reused in a cafe like that was fine and not a major health code violation. The whole time I was reading I was like, where is the editor?? Why is no one checking the little things, there’s SO MANY small inaccuracies but they add up until it seems not only clumsy but lazy. There’s nothing wrong with the grammar but it needs, idk, life-picking, the way fanfics of British media by Americans often need Britpicking.
Also, it seems none of Clare Lydon’s main characters can look at any attractive women without getting aroused; that’s a whole thing. Twitching clits and rushing between the legs and descriptions of breasts on what feels like every second page, and that also doesn’t feel very realistic. Maybe I’m wrong, but I just roll my eyes every time it happens. And while we’re on the topic of unrealistic: the resolution of Victoria’s love life woes was all at once predictable, unbelievable, ridiculous and fitting. I can’t decide how I feel about it even though I called it halfway. Like there wasn’t enough lead up but any more would have been TOO obvious. It’s usually one of my favourite tropes but it just wasn’t executed very well because there was too much other shit going on at the same time.
It was good that Holly called Victoria out on the fact that she constantly made absolutely terrible decisions that only led to more drama, and it was a conversation that should have led to character development, but we didn’t really see any because of the turns the plot took afterwards.
Anyway. Contrary to appearances, I didn’t hate reading this one. It was a bit of a chore by the end when I could see how everything was going to turn out and I was just waiting to get there but it wasn’t hard to read. And for once an author actually wrote believable dialogue, and the banter was great. But I don’t think Clare Lydon is for me and I won’t be reading any of her other books because I don’t really actually enjoy them.