Fa La La by Michelle Cornish is a super quick read. It is a spin on the tale of Robin Hood set around Christmas. However the theme of Christmas is underdeveloped- a Christmas party, a horse drawn carriage and some talk of decorations. I could really see where the story wanted to go but didn’t quite get there for me. The supporting characters weren’t very developed neither was the love story. The reader was told about the main characters attraction to one another but it felt like a middle school romance.

Want to start off by thanking NetGallery, SolVin Creative & author Michelle Cornish for the ARC to review.

Overall I'd give this book a 3 out of 5. There's nothing groundbreaking here but it is a decently fun Christmas read. Will agree with a previous review that the resolution seemed incomplete and pretty implausible. But then again...isn't that every Hallmark Christmas movie? LOL

It's not my favorite Christmas book ever but I'd still recommend it for a read.

I really wanted to love this one, the author is a Canadian CPA and I thought she would write some fun books while using her accounting knowledge.

Robin lost her sister-in-law to a car accident which left her brother reeling and her niece in a wheelchair. Facing a huge debt, Robin decides she will start skimming cash from work to help her brother. After profit declines her boss calls in auditors to look for fraud. Jake is trying to make partner sets out to figure out what is happening and who’s to blame. By the time Jake realizes that Robin is the most likely suspect he is head over heels in love with her.

I’m not sure if auditing works differently in Canada, or is the author is just unfamiliar with how fraud investigations work, but this book was just off. The liberties taken were just wrong. I’ve been an auditor a long time now, and I also hold a fraud investigator designation. Maybe I was just too knowledgeable on the subject to not scrutinize things, but this one didn’t work. I found the main character Robin to not be likable and while I was supposed to like her, I just didn’t. I also found Jake to be a spoiled brat. Also, what was the ending? It was just ridiculous and so unfathomable I was left wondering what I read. This one was a miss for me and next time I’ll think twice about reading a novel about my profession…

Thanks to @netgalley, the publisher SolVin Creative, and XPresso Book Tours for my advanced e-ARC in exchange for this honest review. This one is out November 25 and makes for a quick yet season friendly read.

- Forced proximity
- Workplace romance
- Holiday season
- Robin Hood retelling

This was my first Christmas themed read. I'm excited to get into them this year and I think this novella was the perfect place to start.

Things I liked:
- Dual POV
- Easy and fast to read story
- Likeable MCs

Things I didn't like:
- The storyline about the stolen cash didn't fit with the theme of a holiday romance and the resolution seemed incomplete / implausible
- Ending felt a little rushed
- I would have liked to see a longer length novel to flesh out the characters and build some more tension between Robin and Jake

Overall, it was an enjoyable read to start getting me into the Christmas spirit.

This was a cute spin on Robin Hood with some Christmas flair, but there were some issues with the characters. They felt flat and two dimensional. I also didn’t love that the author used a child’s disability to push the narrative forward, although it was done in a minor way. Overall it was a fun story though so I gave it three stars.

I hate to give review 3 stars and under because I appreciate the talent and work put behind writing a book. I unfortunately had a hard time getting through the book and connecting with the characters. The plot had my attention but I got caught up in all the missing details and the ending just felt flat for me. I believe the story had great potential! Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this book!

It was a good read. The beginning was very slow but I enjoy the characters. Love the Christmas vibes in the book. It a good book to read for Christmas.

Honestly, I could not finish this book. Stopped reading at 60%. There was no back story to the characters so I could not connect with them. I did not feel any chemistry between Robin and Jake.

Fa La La is a holiday romance of a famous retelling of Robin Hood.

Robin works as an events coordinator and excursions director in The Nottingham hotel. This hotel for some reason, is not pulling in profit and losing money. But Robin knows why that is so.

She is the one with her band of friends, slowly pocketing money from the cash sales throughout the year. Why? Robin is doing it for her brother and her niece who is bound to a wheelchair due to a car accident. Because of that accident, enormous medical bills were piling up. To help pay for those bills, Robin decided to pocket cash sales to help him.

Now The Nottingham hotel wanted to get to the bottom of the deficit. So they brought in an outside accounting firm to audit the books. In comes Jake Marian, who quickly discovers that he likes Robin.

Between Jake and Robin, a romance blossoms as Jake dives deeper into the finances of The Nottingham hotel and discovers where the money is going.

Now my thoughts:

This is a cute read for sure. If you need a cozy and easy romance, this is it. You just have to get past the fact that she is basically stealing from the company. Hard fact to get past in today's times.

Now I wish there was more of a relationship that was built between Jake and Robin. They don’t spend a lot of time with each other, so the romance chemistry wasn’t exactly there.

I also felt like a lot of the actions that Robin did were swept under the rug. No consequences whatsoever and those kinds of ends are a little harder for me to get past. But this is a cozy romance read with happy endings and cliche names like in the Hallmark movies, so I was in the mood for that.

Either way, cute and easy Christmas romance.

As a Christmas fanatic and a CPA that specializes in fraud investigation, I thought I had found my perfect book with Fa La La. While the plot was intriguing to me, the story unfortunately fell very flat to me. I did not connect with the characters, who I felt were underdeveloped, and the commentary surrounding the fraud investigation was a bit cringeworthy for me, especially being in the industry. The ending was what really sealed my dislike for this book, though, as it is so far fetched that I almost couldn’t finish the book. There really is no way that an employee could steal so much from a company and the result would be them keeping their job. Maybe I got hung up in the details on this one, but I was disappointed in this book.

this is my first novel my this author and it was quite interesting. I don’t know exactly which part of the book threw me off but this didn’t feel like a Christmas novel to me. The only part would be when they went on the hay ride and that lasted for half a chapter. Robin’s character was just okay for me. I don’t think she had a whole lot of character development in the story unfortunately. Overall the book was just okay for me. I do wish we went into more detail about each character. I feel like I didn’t get to spend enough time with them before the book ended.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me an arc of the book!

I have to give this book 2 stars. While a quick read, the romance story was extremely unbelievable. After maybe seeing each other for 5 minutes, the mains were in love. There is no backstory really for any of the characters, which made is very hard to relate to any of them. The stealing/audit situation in my opinion was cringey.

I do feel like this book had the potential to be such a cute holiday read.
Overall, I struggled to finish this disappointing book, skimming the last half, I never DNF books, but I don't think I'll be recommending this one to any of my friends.

Thank you to Netgalley and Michelle Cornish for this advance read.

I put off writing this review because I loathe writing negative reviews. Especially when it seems the author has worked hard and is passionate about the story they're telling. However, this book needed more rounds of editing and beta reading before being published in its current state.

The story is flimsy, even by romance standards of realism. Never have I wanted realism when picking up a romance novel (by design, they are over-the-top declarations of love and happy endings), but this book never came together. The characters were all so two-dimensional. Even the main characters seemed like cardboard cutouts. There was no build-up, no tension, and no emotion. That, paired with such a far-fetched storyline that wasn't fleshed out, made for a nonsensical story where the character motivations made zero sense.

The reader never gets a sound footing of when and where this story takes place. It truly felt like the author threw a dart at a map, set the novel there, and then proceeded to do no research. (I actually stopped mid-read to research where the author was from because it was so jarringly apparent that I needed to confirm my suspicion).

I'm sorry to say that I was really disappointed with this book. The author's note read that this story resulted from the author seeing a cover she liked and three weeks of writing, and honestly, it shows.

Thank NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really cute concept. I liked the characters - and even agreed with a lot of their reasonings (lol) but even at the “pivotal” moment things didn’t feel that high risk. I felt like Robin and Jake hadn’t had enough interactions (she left the office basically every time he came in) for him to be rooting for her, and there didn’t really seem to be lessons learned or consequences for anyone (don’t get me wrong, I’m on board with that; it just doesn’t seem realistic!). I did enjoy it but it felt rushed and a little unsubstantial because it felt like there was no genuine risk.

Meh,

I mean the premise was supposed to be a sort of Robinhood Retelling, but instead there's a mass orchestrated theft from your employer.. and the way the entire "audit" was done just couldn't... It's too close to home in my line of work I could not get over how everything went.

There was no build up of this insta love, nothing about either character that drew the characters together. Completely unbelievable love story.

The book was tagged under LGBTQ....but why? Because a secondary male character is dating a male doctor? That's it?

I only finished this because it was a quick read, but it's unfortunately a pass from me.

How can a book be so short and yet so bad? By the time the characters were supposed to have strong feelings for each other they had maybe said 25 words to each other. The plot had potential but was so poorly executed.

I received an arc through netgalley.

2.5 Stars

Pros: It was a quick read, with some Christmas-relevant moments (decorations, snow, a holiday party, etc.)
Cons: What (I suppose) is supposed to be a somewhat quirky/fun read - with a side of an unrealistic romance - really never hits the mark.

Based on a Christmas-y modern day version of Robin Hood - you know, they steal from the rich and give to the poor, or in this case, plan to give someone in need of money for health reasons - this story fell short of fun and quirky for me. It was more ho-hum than Ho-Ho-Ho, Merry Christmas.

A young woman, Robin, who works at The Nottingham Hotel, has a brother who lost his wife in an accident, and a daughter who is now in a wheelchair after the accident. She convinces two of her friends working there to help her by pocketing a bit of cash here and there until she can raise enough money for her niece’s surgery. Not in tips, mind you, just pocketing more than just the tips. Noticeably more than the tips. The discrepancies are apparent and there is an audit. Shockingly, she never seemed to consider that would be something that would take place. Shocked though she is, she manages to fall for the guy doing the audit, which seems to me to be a conflict of interest - especially since she knows exactly how much trouble she’d be in, and realizes that someone who is an auditor would probably notice the discrepancies. Just as amazing is the attraction is mutual, even though he obviously suspects that she is involved in the missing funds.

This was a relatively quick read, thankfully, which I read in one sitting. The ending is probably one of the most, if not the most, unrealistic ending I’ve ever read.



Pub Date: 25 Nov 2022

Many thanks for the ARC provided by SolVin Creative

Fa La La
by Michelle Cornish
Earc:NetGalley
Publisher: Solvin Creative
Publication Date:25 November 2022
Genre :General Fiction, Romance
This is the perfect holiday read. From the cover to the blurb, I was thrilled to read it so quickly. I loved it from start to finish.I later found out that this was a transsexual retelling of Robin Hood and loved the description. I can't wait for the release, so I can buy a physical copy for my bookshelf! I think this book has the potential to be very good. A love story with two interesting and conflicting pursuits? Yes, please! I didn't think the story was optimally executed and it felt very rushed at the end. The plot development wasn't all that great, especially considering the amount of opportunities she had to learn! I also felt that the supporting characters were mentioned a lot, but their personalities were interesting enough. but didn't add anything to the story! Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for sending me this ARC of hers. All opinions are my own

#NetGalley #bookstagram #bookreview #goodreads #romance #generalfiction @Solvin Creative

ahhhh! I feel like this book had the potential to be SO GOOD. A romance story with two love interesting striving for opposite things? YES PLEASE! I don’t think that this story was executed in the best way and it felt soo rushed at the end. The story started to pick up in the middle but in the beginning and the end i had to fight to keep reading. The plot development wasn’t great especially considering the many opportunities she had to learn from! I also felt like the side characters were mentioned a ton but they didn’t really add anything to the story when their personalities were definitely interesting enough to do so! Overall, this book wasn’t bad but definitely has lots of room for improvement. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for sending me this ARC! All opinions are my own.

This is one of the worst Christmas novels I have come across. How the author thought that embezzlement was a good plot device for a romantic holiday offering is puzzling. Yes, the whole premise is based on a modern-day version of Robin Hood, but it did not work for me.

Robin Kingsley enlisted the help of her three friends/coworkers to steal funds from their employer, The Nottingham Hotel. The justification for their actions was to assist her brother in paying off enormous medical bills following an accident that cost him his wife and left his daughter in a wheelchair. While this was a noble intent, the short-term benefit did not seem wise when considering the potentially severe consequences. Despite an independent audit that was about to uncover her deception, Robin was still trying to siphon off funds at work. Her only redeeming quality was that she felt guilty for jeopardizing her friends’ and family’s future.

In addition to the questionable plot device, there are other problems that made this a less-than-enjoyable read. The character development is superficial. I did not care for Robin, the protagonist, and the supporting characters were never fleshed out – they seemed more “props” than people. The use of names (Nottingham, Sherwood, Robin, Marian, Sheriff) created a link to the original Robin Hood story, but as a literary device, it felt contrived. The pacing was slow with much repetition over the angst of being caught and the dilemma of a romantic attraction between two people with conflicting goals. Lastly, while I acknowledge that this is fiction, the ending was unrealistic and felt rushed.

Overall, I struggled to finish this disappointing book, skimming the last half. I cannot recommend it.

My thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the privilege of reviewing this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This review is being posted immediately to my GoodReads account and will be posted on Amazon upon publication.