We Met in December- Rosie Curtis

Reading Challenge Category: Book club December read

Official Blurb:

What if you couldn’t get away from the one who got away?
This December, unlucky-in-love Jess is following her dream and moving to Notting Hill. On the first night in her new house-share she meets Alex, the guy in the room next door. They don’t kiss under the mistletoe, but there’s still a spark that leaves Jess imagining how they might spend the year together – never mind the house rule against dating…
But when Jess returns from her Christmas holiday, she finds Alex has started seeing Emma, who lives on the floor above them. Now Jess faces a year of bumping into the man of her dreams – and, apparently, the woman of his.
Jess is determined to move on and spend the year falling in love with London, not Alex – but what if her heart has other ideas?

My Thoughts:

This was my Book Club’s final read for the year, and it was chosen for it being a Christmas book.
To say we were all disappointed would be an understatement. There was nothing festive or Christmassy about this book at all. So, the tagline of ‘The most heartwarming Christmas romance for 2020’ was very misleading.
It starts in December, so at least the title for the book was correct. However, we sort of skim over Christmas because Jess goes on a ski trip with her friends and then comes back to start her new life in January in London. The book ends in December in the snow, but again it is missing that festive magic. You can’t just throw snow at a scene and expect the reader to feel all cosy and whole, curled up reading this!
I was annoyed at the very beginning of the book due to an inconsistency which didn’t bode well for my mood towards the author’s ability to keep her story together. Jess makes a BIG deal about buying Becky flowers on her way to visit. However, when she turns up, she doesn’t hand them over; Becky doesn’t exclaim how beautiful they are. They are just not mentioned; they are completely forgotten about by the author, meaning we wasted our time reading about Jess buying them!
We all felt that the chemistry between Alex and Jess was severely lacking, we just found it hard to root for them. Especially due to Alex’s dalliances with Emma, it made him seem less of ‘the one that got away’ and more of a ’narrow escape’!
The book moves quite quickly through the year, with massive jumps through time which sometimes made it harder to feel invested in the characters as we were missing huge chunks of what was happening in their lives. However, having said that the time we did spend with them was mediocre and not a lot happened. There was a lot of focus on the post they received, making us think this had a significance to the story, it didn’t!
There was the obligatory health scare for Nanna Beth. I felt so dispassionate towards her and Jess that I hoped she wouldn’t die as I couldn’t be bothered reading about Jess’s grief! By this point, I just wanted to get on with the story and get to the inevitable ending.
The ending was predictable, but I suppose, having read the premise, it would be. However, it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been more exciting throughout. You would have been cheering the characters on and felt all good about the ending. None of this happened; I was just glad to get to the end and to be able to have a good moan about it the next day at Book Club. This is definitely a book to avoid, especially if you are looking for a festive or romance read. It is a massive letdown!