A Princess By Christmas

Review originally published at Romancing Romances. I received an eARC at no cost from the publisher, and I am leaving a voluntary and honest review. Thank you. 2.5* First of all, I have to admit it took me quite a bit of time to read this book (and if you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen a few stories about me being bored with the current book). However, I kept reading, and around the 75%, 80% mark, the book did improve. I usually really enjoy Julia London’s writing and stories, but this series has been amiss with me (I’ve started the first one I don’t know how long ago, but since it wasn’t an ARC, I’ve put it aside to read at a different time). I didn’t really like the heroine, Mrs Hollis Honeycutt, and I didn’t like that the author kept perpetuating this “oh corsets are bad, they squeeze you up, bla blab la” situation. If you’re interesting in knowing more about the subject, and why it’s wrong to keep saying this, check out Abby Cox, Bernadette Banner, and others on YouTube. It really annoyed me that even though we were given a curvy heroine, she was always complaining about the tight dresses, not wanting to wear a corset, and her family just kept harassing her about her extra weight. It just seemed unnecessary, and too much, too many times. I wasn’t a fan of the heroine’s family, either. It just didn’t feel right how they treat Hollis, and how she sometimes behaved. I actually liked Marek, even though it was hard to know him – but that was part of his charm. I felt the whole white hair/deaf situation (me trying not to spoil things!) was left unfinished, and in truth the title made me think something different would have happened. I liked the main plot point, but boy did it drag on! It took a looong time for something to happen, which is one of the reasons why this book was just too boring for me. At the end, it picked up the pace a bit, but that didn’t make up for everything before. There really isn’t much more to say about the book, it wasn’t bad, it just was… boring.