I received this as a Review Copy for an honest review.
Private chef Juliet Hill is sure that her perfect boyfriend is going to propose to her this Christmas – so the last thing she expects to find in his flat is a slutty thong that is most definitely not hers!
Unable to face being alone over the holiday, she accepts a job at her home-from-home Thornton Hall, the Earl of Gloucester’s ancestral pile, cooking up a storm for the family’s seasonal guests.
However, romance definitely isn’t off the cards as the sparks fly between her and head chef Edward, not to mention with her many-time boss Jasper Roth – and what is she to think when even her toe-rag boyfriend follows her like a lovesick puppy?
But there seems to be more going on wiith the family and tensions boil over when the Earl falls ill.
I’ve never been one for Christmas really, but this year, tried a few things to get myself more into the mood. This included picking out a book that was about Christmas, looked ‘chick lit’ and therefore a very easy read and might make me feel full of a bit of festive cheer. The fact that it was based around food definitely appealed to me too!
Juliet was actually a great character – believable and likeable. Messed up, confused, needy but not a total pushover – you know, like most girls. The rest of the characters, not quite so believable really – very much secondary.
I also had a bit of a problem with the way that so many past events were referred to. I kept checking that Juliet hadn’t already appeared in another book and that this was a later book in the series. It really felt that I should have been aware of what had gone on before (imagine dropping in on Becky for the first time in Shopaholic Ties The Knot).
Enough was explained that you did have the whole story eventually, but it was a little disconcerting to be drip fed the past in that way..
In fact even the start of the story felt like it was a continuation of a scene that I’d just missed.
Don’t get me wrong, as frothy easy-to-read chick-lit goes, it hit the spot. It did what it said on the tin (or the cover). However, part of me wonders whether there is a pre-Christmas Juliet story laying around somewhere!
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