Doesn’t the title, The Christmas Eve Bride, sound like a romantic courtship, wedding and honeymoon? Instead this is a hurried little story about Amber, now working as a gardener for a rich couple who live near her married sister, and her former love Rocco. Amber was deeply in love with Rocco and mentioned to a former school friend that they were together; the school friend then embroidered this into a juicy tell-all tabloid scoop.
Rocco didn’t even give Amber a chance to explain, he dumped her and told her not to call him again or he’d file stalking charges. A week or so later Amber discovered she was pregnant, her employers fired her and she couldn’t get a job that paid enough to raise her baby. She eventually ended up working as a gardener on an estate near her sister because the job came with a small cottage. Our story opens with Rocco visiting the estate and spotting her, assumed she was there researching for another tell-all story. Various insults and kisses later Rocco asks her to move to London to be his mistress. He knows nothing about her baby but is exhilirated to discover they had a child and quickly falls back in love with Amber and they marry on Christmas Eve.
The basic problem here is the story and characters stay just that, not real people we can imagine being. There is no immediacy, no sense of empathy. I can imagine a man being glad to discover he has a child – but only after he gets over being flabbergasted, dismayed and angry. Yet author lets us think that Rocco is surprised, yes, but delighted.
Add to the weak characters to the silly plot and you have a book that is barely readable, certainly nothing worth spending a couple of hours on. So why did I read it? It was part of a bundle borrowed on Hoopla and it was a very fast read on New Year’s Eve.
I reserve 1 Star ratings for books I couldn’t finish, so let’s be generous,
2 Stars
The comic version of The Christmas Eve Bride standalone novel is available on Amazon; I didn’t find the bundle.
Leave a Reply