This is a really excellent read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My only reservation is about the number of characters which makes it difficult to follow all their stories and detracts from a the closer focus on the one I thought was the main character.
Great to see a story set in Iceland and which showed up the damage so many money making ideas can do to the natural world.

Thanks for my ARC - my review is my honest opinion.

I always enjoy books by this author but I really enjoyed this latest one. How wonderful to be stuck in Iceland in an area with no tourists and get to experience local life for a few days. The main character was interesting and I couldn’t put the book down, wanting to find out where each of the characters would end up after taking some time out to actually think about what was important to each of them. I’ve always wanted to to travel to that part of the world and after the author took me there in this wonderful story I’m even more eager to go there. Thank you netgalley

As said before, I adore Christmas books and I adore Jo Thomas books, but sadly this didn’t hit the heights for me. I so wanted to love it. It sounded absolutely gorgeous, but it fell flat for me.

I didn’t gel with any of our lead female characters. I didn’t think much of our dashing hero, and even Iceland itself didn’t get much of a big-up. I can’t say anything was particularly bad about it, it was pleasant to read, and I finished it, which is more than I can say for a number of other books, but I felt it was all a bit meh, a bit tepid, a bit vanilla. And that’s not what I expect from a Jo Thomas book or what I want from a festive offering.

I think one of the main things I didn’t particularly like, is I felt the characters weren’t developed enough. They were a bit predictable, and their jobs, their characteristics were thrown in when required but never developed enough for you to really have any opinion on, good or bad. They didn’t seem real, which is a shame, as I think character creation is something Jo Thomas is particularly good at.

I also found it very repetitive. People explaining the same thing again and again, tasks and days doing the same thing. It felt monotonous, like the ideas had run out. I understand that within the story, things have to be repeated to different groups of people, but for a reader it is a bit boring and frustrating.

There are random bits of storyline dropped in but never really developed into anything substantial. And I feel that if a plot point is important enough to mention several times (not just the one mention), then there should be a reason for it and it should be developed. But there are a few things in this book that are mentioned more than once, but they don’t have any real effect on the story and you wonder why they’re there at all.

Even though it’s not far off 400 pages, it felt slow and then rushed. It plods on for probably about 80% of the book, and then it’s like she panicked and said “I’ve only got a few pages left and so much to put in”, so then everything happens at once, including things that have never been eluded to in the previous pages and so seem a bit random. Confessions are made, people go missing, jobs are taken and left, people fall in and out of love etc. I think it would have flowed better if things had been touched upon throughout the book, with a payoff at the end, rather than nothing for ages and then wham, bam!

Overall, I was really disappointed in this one. I adore Jo Thomas’ books and it won’t stop me reading others by her, but I was definitely expecting more from this one.