Review: A picturesque holiday romance!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 25, 2012
You could say that I'm a long-time loyal reader of Christi Barth, I have read and enjoyed her latest 3 novels (Act Like We're in Love, Cruisin' Toward Love and Planning for Love), so I knew that any Christi Barth story would be a sweet romance. Combine that with a holiday setting and I couldn't resist the temptation! :-DAlthough Ask Her at Christmas featured one of my favourite tropes (the "best friends to lovers" trope with a bit of marriage of convenience thrown in) it failed to enchant me. Christi Barth's writing was wonderful, she has a way with words to paint the perfect holiday settings ;-) (you'll feel as if you were watching a holiday movie with her colourful and vivid descriptions of scenes and events), but despite the holiday ambiance permeating the story and truly adding the sprinkling of snow and bough of holly on top I couldn't love the romance since I had trouble connecting with the characters and understanding their motivations. Maybe it was because the hero and heroine were both so ready to forget about their love and give up their decade-long friendship or just because the characters didn't make much sense to me.On paper everything should have been perfect: Kyle the geeky yet drop dead gorgeous IT guy who has been best friends with unassuming, bestest of all friends Caitlin, who is ready to do whatever for him, even planning the most perfect and romantic proposal so the guy she has been in love with can ask his girlfriend to marry him. This setup right there was a bit unnatural, it took me some imagination to believe that Caitlin, despite being the best friend there could be would be so ready to help Kyle woo a woman for life when it would mean her eternal unhappiness. And their motivations behind their acts just left me baffled:Kyle is marrying a woman who is more of an escort to social events than a girlfriend to impress his father, and Caitlin is giving up his best friend and her love for him because she wants to help him obtain his father's approval."I'm not going into this marriage to make googly-eyes and quote poetry. Monica and her precious hotel chain get perks if we marry, and I get my dad's respect."Neither character won my approval. Despite being a grown up Kyle seemed way too quivering under his father's judgement and besides the very few allusions to convey that Kyle found Caitlin attractive there wasn't much to show he was in love with her or was worthy of her love."Umm, because you're dating Kyle?""We're not exclusive. He knows it. Kyle certainly doesn't sit home alone when I'm out of town."Well, that was true. He'd racked up his fair share of hookups.It may be naive of me but when a heroine is celibate because she loves the hero I would expect quite the same from the hero...And the potential fiancée was such a cardboard villainess it made me cringe. She was really awful. I understand that in a novella it would have been difficult to make her a more nuanced character but I still would have preferred to have her be a bit gray instead of the sharp black that she  and white  that Caitlin was.Pushing up into a half crouch with one hand on the table, Monica whipped out the other to encircle Caitlin's wrist. "Listen carefully. You will take the job, you will leave Chicago, and you will cut Kyle out of your life."Verdict: I still love Christi Barth's writing but despite its holiday setting and the wonderful holiday ambience that permeated this story, due to the characters I couldn't understand or like much, Ask Her at Christmas wasn't such a hit with me. Also at the end, while everyone knew a HEA was mandatory I still found the proposal superfluous and rushed. Sure, the hero's declaration of love was romantic and swoon-worthy, but I find it rushed to get married after one kiss and a decade of friendship, shouldn't they try dating first?Once again Christi Barth delivers a picturesque romance with flowing writing and beautiful lines but I just couldn't understand or like the characters, so sorry Ask Her at Christmas, it's not you it's the characters."You deserve a wife who belongs to you, body and soul. You deserve a lover in your marriage bed. Someone to be there in the middle of the night to chase the demons away. Someone who fires up your blood and stirs your passion. Someone who wants you, who needs you with every cell of her body."I give Ask Her at Christmas 3.5 stars!Plot: 7/10Characters: 7/10Writing: 9/10Ending: 7/10Cover: 8/10