Book Review: Christmas at Thornton Hall

Book: Christmas at Thornton Hall by Lynn Marie Hulsman

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Rating: 1 star

Review:

I tried to like this but this was just an awful story. It progressively got worse as the story went along. I could not connect with the main character Juliet Hill who was a total mess. Even though she loved her career as a private and successful chef she was trying so hard to live up to her mother's standards. She was currently living in London and was planning on going back to NYC and return to studying psychology even though her heart wasn't really in it, all to please her mother. And not to mention it goes well with her stuffy lawyer boyfriend's career. However her plans change when she finds out her boyfriend Ben cheated on her and she took a catering job at Thornton Hall to deal with her heartbreak. The thing I don't get is, Juliet didn't call or leave Ben a note saying she was breaking up with him or something like that. She just leaves without telling him anything (which felt like a total plot device by the way and I knew this issue was going to show up sometime later and it did).

What annoyed me besides the annoying main character was that even though Juliet detailed her bad decisions about dating and relationships (and she had plenty) that didn't stop her from quickly hooking up with the head chef Edward or constantly thinking about fooling around with Jasper Roth who's married to the Earl and Countess' daughter. To make matters even worse, Juliet nearly had a romantic incident with Jasper the last time she was catering Thornton Hall.

How many guys did she have going after her? When Ben showed up at the estate why didn't she have him removed? It made no sense why he was even at Thornton Hall. And I can't fathom the appeal of Jasper Roth, he's slimy. The only guy I found remotely interesting was Edward but I couldn't understand what he saw in Juliet.

Juliet might have been 28 years old but she was so immature and unprofessional. The story did not have a Christmas feel at all, instead it's a boring book about a young woman who can't figure out what she wants to do with her life. The story just felt like it was all over the place and it felt like a crude parody of Downton Abbey.

On a bright note, I did like Juliet's friend Posy Was-Bailey. If the author ever decided to write a well written interesting story about her, I would definitely be interested in reading that. Posy was just so much more interesting than Juliet.