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A Recipe for Christmas book review

 


I read my first Jo Thomas festive book last year and really really enjoyed it so had reasonable hopes for this one but I also didn't feel that they were too high. However while this book was by no means bad it also wasn't really anything special and didn't stand out among all the other festive books I've read. 

A Recipe for Christmas follows Clara who has just moved to Switzerland with her new boyfriend and has signed up for a chocolate making course that is more serious than it seemed and not everything is going to plan with her new boyfriend either. 

I enjoyed reading about Clara and seeing her discover what it was she actually wanted in life rather than just following the path she had been set on since her first job and starting to take risks that she wouldn't have previously. I also enjoyed meeting many of the other characters that this book featured including Clara's friends from home and those on the chocolate making course with her. 

The chocolate was fun and a part of the book I found myself looking forward to reading. It was nice to watch Clara learn, find her feet and work out what she wanted to do with her chocolates, it also made me crave proper chocolate which is a good sign. 

However where this book fell flat for me was that I didn't find myself invested in the story like I normally am, I definitely had opinions about what I didn’t want to happen but with some characters featured you definitely are meant to feel that way. I wasn't invested in Clara and Gabriel's budding relationship and I felt like I could have just put the book down one day, not gone back to it and that not have ultimately bothered me. I can also pretty certainly say that it wasn't the predictably of this sort of storyline that put it off for me as that is one of my favourite things about festive books, you know what will ultimately happen in the end but get to experience it with slightly different plots and new characters. 

I also found that while parts of the book made clever sense for the book and worked really well, they were kind of resolved too easy for the ending and everything conveniently comes together at the end to make this perfect ending and it just felt like it was done to make the ending as meaningful as possible to the plot but instead to me just felt convenient and I wasn't a fan of. 

Overall this was a festive book that I would recommend to some people however with the window that I read festive books in I almost wish I had read something else as I think I will just forget this one as time goes on. I will give Jo Thomas another chance as I loved Countdown to Christmas last year however I suspect if I feel similarly about that book as I do this one she may not be an author I return to.

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