Christmas Is All Around by Martha Waters [ARC Review]
“Christmas Is All Around” is Martha Water’s festive contemporary debut, and tells the story of Charlotte and Graham.
After a rather jarring encounter with a Christmas, Truly fan, the former child actress Charlotte Lane flees to London to spend the holidays with her sister and her growing family. Unfortunately for this particular Christmas disliking New Yorker, her sister drags her all over the place to create the perfect first Christmas for her daughter, including an event at the filming set of Christmas, Truly. There she runs into the owner of Eden Priory, Graham who is very busy saving his family’s business. Together they start working on an art collection depicting famous filming locations for Christmas movies which is supposed to help Charlotte get a foot in the English art market and improve business for Graham. But time trapped in Graham’s mini cooper driving through the picturesque landscape of England, Charlotte and Graham get much closer than business partners ought to be…
As this novel is a single POV romance novel, my discussion of the main characters will mostly focus on Charlotte as the story is completely told from her perspective. Personally, Charlotte has been a difficult character for me. On one hand, she is smart with great humour that follows her passion with great ambition and determination. On the other, she is undoubtedly almost unbearingly grumpy, selfish and a little too mean for my taste. I get it, Charlotte is supposed to be a Grinch-type character, but I think Waters went a little too overboard. The way Charlotte talks about her family, and especially her little niece is off-putting, and clearly falls into the category of low-key child hating. I do not have a problem with characters not having an interest in family and having children, but when it borders on straight up degrading children and people having such a life, I get a little fuzzy myself. We’re talking about her sister having a six-months old, and Charlotte is definitely not a fan, and extremely unsupportive of her sister. That's the selfishness point I mentioned prior. And considering how the “conflict” is built up and handled later in the novel, I feel this part of the story never comes up, it’s a given that Charlotte doesn’t like children. Also, there is so much inconsistency with Charlotte as a character. She dislikes Christmas, and then decides to join her sister’s celebration for her daughter’s first Christmas only to complain about it from the beginning to the end. She clearly went through with her personal ambitions rather than doing what her parents wanted her to do, and yet this is still relevant enough to the plot to constantly bring up how the successful Charlotte is standing up to her parents. Charlotte agrees to paint the filming set of Christmas, Truly for Graham’s business, and then breaks up with him because their relationship is too connected to her movie career that she hates. It all doesn’t really make much sense.
Now to Graham though is not a main character in the sense that we have his perspective on everything going on, he is an essential part of the romance portion of this novel. The thing is there isn’t much to say about Graham, I actually found him sort of bland. Nothing about his backstory or personality truly stands out. In fact, his biggest problem is that he seems a little too perfect. He just was there simping for Charlotte from the moment they met, and never truly pushing back at her for treating him rather awfully. I don’t know, I wish he had more of a backbone, more flaws and something that makes him memorable.
Their romance was ok. The meet-cute was pretty hilarious, and I liked the way Graham matched Charlotte’s humour, and they exchanged some pretty well written banter. However, the development of their romance was at the beginning super slow, like no romance there until like the 60 % mark, and after that it went rather quickly with them kissing and having relations all in the same night. A lot of their intimate conversation felt a little too constructed, and I didn’t feel much when they poured their hearts out to each other. In general because of the extremely slow progression of their relationship, I started to not really care about them as a couple. Even when they finally did get together there weren’t many emotional or physical intimate scenes, they just were a thing now and it didn't really seem to matter all that much. The third act breakup was ridiculous, it didn’t make any sense whatsoever why they broke up. And in my opinion Charlotte deserved to grovel a heck load more. The conclusion of their relationship was again bland. I mean, they are about to enter a long distance relationship or make a big decision regarding a six-week relationship, but in the end none of that is discussed, they just love each other. Done.
Plot wise the book wasn’t all over, but sometimes I felt like the story doesn’t tell where it wants to go, especially in regards to Charlotte’s inner conflicts. The conflict between her and her acting past, the conflict between her and her parents, the conflict between her and the fact that all her friends are moving on in life, as well as her conflict with her past relationship are all brought up, but not discussed in any meaningful way. These conflicts are simply there to jazz up Charlotte’s personality and reason why she is grumpy. Very quickly I found myself much more invested in the stories of the supporting cast. Ava, Kit and Alice were much more interesting and entertaining than Charlotte. Even Graham’s family and their troubles seemed much more real and touching than Charlotte’s family drama.
In general the supporting cast was the highlight of this book. From Charlotte’s best friend who is a tough lawyer obsessed with romance novels, or her sister Ava who is a melodramatic actress with much personality and heart to Charlotte’s parents. Everyone except for the main couple was so full of life and personality that they pulled me through the story even though I got disinterested in the main plot pretty quick. The biggest flaw in my opinion was Charlotte, or more some aspects of her personality. I found her very difficult to identify with or relate to. Even her redemption arch is so low, it’s practically not there.
Actually, I am quite the Martha Waters fan, and I demolished all of her historicals, but her contemporary debut could not win me over. Maybe it’s the fact that in general I have a difficult time with festive romances, maybe that just wasn’t it.
Overall, I have to say that “Christmas Is All Around” has been quite the disappointment. It suffered from the same difficulties as Waters last historical. There was much potential as seen by the supporting cast and great dialogue, but it all got watered down with unengaging main characters, pointless conflict, and an unsatisfying ending. Unfortunately, not a recommendation from me.
Comments
Post a Comment