From Paris With Love This Christmas by Jules Wake

I bought this book after reading Covent Garden In The Snow and I have to admit I found it rather disappointing.  The characterisations in this book are very flat and nobody feels like a flesh and blood person.  The majority of the tale is set in Leighton Buzzard with only a brief sojourn in Paris so I was expecting snow by the Seine and instead got snow by Watling Street.

Siena in particular is nothing more than a materialist who appears to blame everything in life on her mother - as is the way of this genre mothers are either completely apple-cheeked and wonderful or complete harridans and Siena's mother is the latter.  Her conversion in to this warm, capable organiser is not entirely believable and I found myself heaving a few hearty sighs of annoyance at her antics.

Jason is the surly, crossed in love male whose heart she has to win.  He is a slightly more fleshed out character with a decent support network and a passion for brewing.  It is this passion that prevents the character from becoming annoying to the same level as Siena's but he is still right up there for this reader.

I found myself just wanting to get to the end of the book so that they could be together and it was all over.  Particularly as I could not really see either of these people together and it felt all forced and contrived to get them to this point.  Especially the section where a few drinks breaks through Siena's repressed sexuality - bit of a dangerous message there in my mind.  If she had suffered at the hands of her fiance as the novel would have us believe then I don't think the "love of a good man" and a few wines would break through that trauma.

Her estranged sister Laurie and her gentleman, Cameron, are far more interestingly written and so little time is spent with them.  It did make me wonder if their story was dealt with in another tome but I was so disappointed in this book that I find I don't really want to bother looking at Ms. Wake's books to find out.

However, this is a 2015 publication so maybe Ms. Wake was still finding her feet, I may well check out one of her later books in case this is a blip but I remain to be convinced that more disappointment will not follow.

To sum up it a bland, cookie cutter read that is, on the whole, inoffensive.  If you are a fan of this genre then you may well extract more enjoyment from this book than I did.  I did give it three stars, this much is blatantly true, but only as I fear my judgement was clouded by loving Covent Garden In The Snow so much that my judgement of this book may have been impaired.

**Review originally published December 16th, 2017**