Jess has just moved to London and is renting a room in a Notting Hill house-share with a friend from college and three strangers. On her first night, she bonds with Alex, the guy living in the room next to her. Unfortunately, when Jess returns from a two-week Christmas holiday, she discovers Alex has started dating Emma, who lives on the floor above them. Now Jess has to spend a year being “just friends” with Alex.
I liked this book. It is a very slow-burn romance with an eclectic cast of characters. Despite the word “December” in the title, this is not a holiday book. This story is told over the course of a year and begins and ends in December.
The story is told from both Jess and Alex’s point of view. Each chapter lists the date so we see how time passes as the story goes on. It was especially helpful as the book takes place over the span of a year.
As a newcomer to London, Jess doesn’t really know her way around so Alex volunteers to go exploring with her. A lot of the story takes place as they are walking around London and seeing the sights and I really loved this. I felt like London was another character in the story. The way that the author was able to capture the vibrance of the city was wonderful and it was easy to imagine all the places they went to.
The one thing that I found annoying was that there was a lot of miscommunication and the majority of Alex and Jess’s issues are caused by them not communicating with each other. If they would have just asked each other their questions instead of assuming they knew the answers, this book would have been a lot shorter. I also felt like the ending was really rushed and just ended abruptly. I’m pretty sure Alex and Jess kissed and got together on the second to last page.
Despite that, I could definitely see this movie as a Hallmark or Lifetime channel movie.
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