Please Come Home for Christmas. Kahillah Fox. 2016. 65 pages. HeartBeat Press. [Source: Kindle Unlimited.]
So, I love all things Christmas. Sure, I grumble about the cold, the stress of decorating and gift buying, and dinner planning. But I also permanently change my radio station to 97.1fm the day after Thanksgiving because that’s when the Christmas music starts. So when I came across Please Come Home For Christmas last night on Kindle Unlimited, I said why not have a little Christmas in April. I’m clearly a glutton for punishment.
This book is centered around Zahara, who reluctantly returns home to Maryland for Christmas. She’s been living the life in California, and the slow, cold style of Maryland just doesn’t fit her. When she arrives home, she finds her parents have invited over her ex-boyfriend, Adrian, and he’s on a mission to win back her heart. Throw in some drama with her younger sister and a surprise pop-up from her boyfriend Christian, and you’ve got all the makes of a holiday (maybe) romance that will at least entertain you while you sip your egg nog.
The premise of this story was actually what pulled me in, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The editing needs a lot of work. I almost stopped reading after the first two pages because the errors made it difficult to understand. I don’t like having to guess what the correct words should have been or decipher run-on sentences. Better punctuation, appropriate word choice, and proof-reading for clarity would help a great deal. However, it’s a very short read (around 20 minutes), so I stuck it out.
Overall, this book felt jolting to read because of how fast the pace was. The story was predictable and felt rushed to happy endings. It wasn’t hard to see how things were going to end, especially with the blatant foreshadowing. Even elements that were supposed to be surprises or cliffhangers seemed bland. Given the amount of backstory and overlap of characters, this book should have been longer. I would have loved to see better character development, too, since they all seemed one-dimensional.
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