4/5
What a book. I stupidly started this at 11pm, could not put it down and literally fell asleep with the Kindle in my hand at 2am.
For clarity, I was lucky enough to receive this as an e-arc via Netgalley. I’m astounded by how much I enjoyed this book. I did not want to read a Christmas book in October but y’all. This is advertised as a Christmas book, but it’s so much more. The depth of the characters/romance in this book… way much more than a Contemporary Christmas novel.
So to begin with, you follow the main character Lee, Lee has a son called Jazz who is the most adorable kid ever. She lives in Amsterdam but is English. You follow her life after leaving war photography behind and is now photographing A-List stars.
Lee is a fantastic protagonist, she is strong, caring and absolutely brilliant at her job. But there is a mystery surrounding her. Firstly, we don’t know who Jazz’s father is, secondly she’s estranged from a former colleague/best friend and finally seems to have brought a bit of the war back with her.
I absolutely love the male characters in this book, they’re fantastic. I can’t really say much more without spoiling the plot but I just love the side romances which were happening too. This was an extremely well thought out book, Lee’s back story was multi-dimensional, I definitely could have read another 100 pages or so of this novel.
It was everything you would want on a cold day snuggled in bed.
I do have to give it minus 1 star, as the mystery reveal fell a bit flat for me. Lee is an enigma, this was a key part of the story, but it felt like the reveal around the multi-facets of Lee’s life was lacking the execution it needed. The delivery could have been a chapter but it was reduced to 1 page.
All in all, a truly captivating book. I would highly, and I mean HIGHLY recommend.
You can buy it here:
0 comments on “‘Together by Christmas’ by Karen Swan”