Loving Literatures

Despite reading the vast majority of it in one day, it was a challenging read only because I don’t like spice, and this book was SPICY. By far, the spiciest book I have ever read, and there was barely a mention of Christmas, even with the title being centered around it, until maybe the last thirty pages 😦

For being a story focused on the holidays, it was all about an enemies-to-lovers fling (don’t get me wrong, I love this trope, but there was not much time in between the introduction to enemies to lovers; the two seemed to have fallen fairly quickly, surprisingly). I would have enjoyed the book more if certain scenes had not been so descriptive and had not taken away from the story of rebuilding the storm-hit town of Merry in time for Christmas. I would have liked to lean more into the small-town vibe and less into the reality-TV show development of the town-rebuilding project and the large portion of the book: the couple’s intimacy.

It was a bit too much for me, but these are my reading preferences, of course. I will finally note that some of the dialogue was cringy; I hope people don’t speak to their partners the way they did in real life…

Score does a great job at the enemies-to-lovers flirting. I applaud her for that. The beginning spark, flirtatious comments, and yearning had readers giggling, myself at least. I also appreciated Noah’s character development; he was a grump who wanted to change for Cat, but also for himself, his daughter, and the town (as town manager). And he opened up about his past scars; it was very brave to admit to someone he barely knew, at the time. Cat’s character development was alright; she did change more towards the end, in terms of her balance of professional and personal ambitions, but it took some time.