Cover Image: I'll Be Gone for Christmas

I'll Be Gone for Christmas

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Member Reviews

<b>The Good</b>
I love and relate to both of these main characters. Bee's story was so relatable to me. Not feeling like enough while also wholly burnt out. I liked her rediscovering her passion with her parents belittlement. I loved seeing her find herself and explore her sexuality and the lesbian community in San Francisco. Clover's story with her mother and Knox is so heartbreaking. Her mother didn't accept her and after her death she begins to understand her sexuality which leads to her breaking off her engagement with her lifelong best friend Knox. The two romances in this were sweet. I liked Clover and Beth's dynamic. Beth was hard to grasp as a character but she's Darcy-esque in the way she comes off as rude when she isn't trying to. Bee and Knox have good chemistry. They are so cute and they have fun together. Knox obviously is going through alot after his relationship with Clover so I understood his hesitation and the push and pull. Beth and Bee's relationship was also interesting. Beth view's Bee as free and not caring when Bee cares so much. Bee see's Beth as the perfect child while Beth is dealing with their parent's homophobia.

<b>The Bad</b>
At 90% I was so worried how these plot-lines were going to be wrapped up. It didn't feel rushed per-say but I was wishing for something more big and dramatic than what happened.

<b>Tropes:</b>
— Holiday Romance
— Small town vs Big City
— Grumpy x Sunshine

<b>Horn Level:</b> 1/5🌶️
<b>Format:</b> Ebook

<b>The Rating</b>
I give this book a <b>4/5🌟 rating.</b> This is such a sweet holiday romance with a lot of heart!

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Avon and Harper Voyager | Avon and NetGalley provided an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.

I had high hopes for this book, but I was a bit disappointed. I didn’t connect with the main characters and I found myself rushing towards the end.

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I ended up enjoying this book but only so much because I wasn’t the biggest fan of Bee and Knox. I felt like Clover and Beth were written very well and their characters were developed nicely along with their chemistry but can’t say the same for the other two. Unfortunately because of that I ended up not enjoying the chapters that were focused on Bee and Knox and they felt more like side characters to me.

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this was okay, didn’t hate it but didn’t love it! this was a cute house swap rom com story that i think many will find cozy!

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The Holiday is one of my absolute favorite romcoms, so I was really excited to receive an ARC for I'll Be Gone for Christmas. I really liked the characters in this book. It was nice to see Bee and Clover work on themselves and figure out what they wanted in life. I also liked their love interests! For what we saw of both of them I felt like it was pretty realistic.

However, I do think this book could explore each individual relationship a bit more. This was not a particularly long romance novel at just about 200 pages so I definitely think there was space to have more romantic interactions between both couples. I feel like we were just starting to get to understand their relationships. I still enjoyed the book, but fitting two romance story is the length that it was made it feel like there were a few scenes that were missing.

Overall, this was a cute, fun and quick read!

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I'm always scoping out sapphic books, so I was really excited for this one. Unfortunately, I'm just in a reading slump right now so this one didn't grab me right away.

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I really liked Clover and Beth (individually and together). I wish there had been more active romance, or more active build up of the romantic relationships. I love a romance where the characters are also working through something, but the story felt a bit unbalanced and the working through something was repetitive for both Bee and Clover.

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