It’s Christmas Eve and the worst blizzard for fifty years has blanketed Gracetown. But as well as snowflakes, love is in the air – and appearing in the most unexpected ways…
Who’d have thought a freezing hike from a stranded train would end with a delicious kiss from a charming stranger? Or that a trip to the Waffle House through four feet of snow could lead to romance with an old friend? Or that the path to true love begins with a painfully early morning shift at Starbucks?
Touching, hilarious and filled with festive cheer, the magic of the holiday season shines on these three interconnected tales of love, romance and breathtaking kisses.
Title: Let It Snow
Author: John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
Publisher: Penguin
Date: September 2013
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance
I’ll start this by saying that this book took me a year to read. Literally an entire year. I started reading it in December 2018 as a fun, festive read, didn’t finish it, and then proceeded to not pick it back up until an entire year later, in December 2019.
Maybe my opinion would have been more positive if I read it last year. Maybe, if I read it all in one go rather than over the course of a year, I would have appreciated it more.
But, alas, that is not how this story goes.
Please note that if you’re a fan of this book, prepare to hold on to your hats and your feelings. This won’t be spoiler-free, and it’s going to be one heck of a rant.
Let’s get straight to the point: this book sucked and I was a little disappointed, but also not altogether surprised. Okay, maybe sucked is an exaggeration. But…
No, sorry, it sucked.
The reason I’m not altogether surprised is because I’ve seen very mixed reviews often swaying more towards the negative side, so I wasn’t expecting a literary masterpiece. I also knew going in that it’s a lighthearted romance, and romance is not my thing.
In case you’re not sure (and you didn’t read the synopsis above), Let It Snow is a festive story split into three short stories – kind of like three novellas, each written with several chapters. Each of the stories have their own characters and storylines, and then they all come together and connect at the end. Sounds cool, but I’m not entirely convinced it’s well-executed. (But more on that later.)
Here’s a quick summary of the three stories, and then I’ll focus on each one in more detail and rip them to shreds. The first part by Maureen Johnson was good and I enjoyed it. The second part by John Green was rubbish and I actually hated it. The final part by Lauren Myracle was a slight improvement on the second, but was utterly pointless. Hooray!
Part 1: The Jubilee Express by Maureen Johnson
I’m equally glad and annoyed that this was the first story in the book. Glad because it was good and I enjoyed it, so it was a good start; annoyed because it sets up the rest of the book to suck, because the other two stories in no way compare to this one.
The Jubilee Express is an enjoyable story that follows a character I was at least mildly interested in. I liked her enough to want to know what happened to her, and the story was intriguing enough to encourage me to continue. Unlike the train wreck of the next one lol. It was also great at setting up the scene for the rest of the book and giving us a great starting character that we’d see again later on.
Most importantly, it did its job at feeling festive and jolly and filling my cold heart with warmth. It has festive charm but with an added layer of intriguing plot (like the main character’s parents being held in jail for accidentally being around when the police came to investigate the robbery of Flobie Santa Village pieces from a showroom), and it definitely helped me get into the “community coming together at Christmas” spirit.
Then, a year later, the second story happened, and my 4-star rating shot down to a 2.
Part 2: A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle by John Green
Hated it. (~sirens sound~ Beware, rant warning ahead! ~wee woo wee woo~)
From the very beginning of this story I felt absolutely nothing towards the incredibly flat characters who all seemed to possess a grand total of one personality trait each.
I was constantly annoyed by their terrible decisions. Usually, I don’t judge a book by the character’s decisions, because decisions — good or bad — are what make characters real and human and give them depth. But these were just so awful that I cringed the entire time and hated the story as a result. Like, for example, in several feet of snow, the group of friends decided to try and drive twenty miles to a Waffle House. Why, I hear you ask?
Because there were some cheerleaders there.
That’s the ONLY REASON. adjcksjfsdmlfkldsf
There were also several times when I hated the language choices – guys calling the only girl in the story a “slut” for no real reason and it was seemingly glossed over (pointless), and also the (also pointless) use of the word “retard”. It made me cringe so hard that I wanted to curl up like a tiny hedgehog and hibernate forever, away from the clutches of this god-forsaken story.
Oh, on top of everything, I thought for a slight second that there could be a glimmer of positivity when I suspected the girl character (I wish I could use their names but I’ve literally forgotten them all and I don’t have the energy to check) might be gay. The boys were teasing her about the cheerleaders and also about some guy who might be her boyfriend, and she was getting all sensitive and annoyed at them. I thought it could be because she’s gay, but HAHAHA NOPE guess what…
It was because she was in love with the male main character. HAHA. Yep. Why wouldn’t it be that? Of course it was that! Because this is a John Green story!!!! Of COURSE the one girl is in love with the boring, flat, lifeless male main character. What I else can I expect other than a forced hetero romance between two characters who have no chemistry or any scrap of personality lol
Safe to say, I wasn’t a big fan. This story was just boring to read, and I was so close to DNFing the rest of the book… but I decided, “no, I’ve come this far. I’ve been reading this for a freaking year. I’m finishing this god damn book if it kills me.”
Part 3: The Patron Saint of Pigs by Lauren Myracle
The final story, this time by Lauren Myracle, was marginally more enjoyable than the bore that was the second story — but unfortunately it was utterly pointless, didn’t add anything to the overall story, and I didn’t know why it needed to be there.
I read this one faster than the previous one because there was actually an ounce of plot. However, I still didn’t care how it played out because I didn’t care about the characters or the story or anything. It was just a bit… meh. A bit flat. The story just didn’t seem very relevant and as much as I didn’t hate reading it, I still wondered why I was reading it.
The end tried to bring all the characters together and connect all three stories, but it seemed rushed and generally a bit pointless (that seems to be my word for this review). I also didn’t like the fact that this story ripped every scrap of characterisation that the other authors did build in previous stories and threw it all straight into the sea.
Sadly, it was a bit of a crap ending that I don’t think I even paid a lot of attention to because I simply didn’t care. I just wanted to move onto something good.
Short stories can be a bit hit or miss. I’ve read some really great short story collections, and some that are just okay. This one was just very meh.
I know the thing with short stories is that you don’t get a lot of time to develop characters, but I’ve read a lot of short stories that might only be 20-40 pages but I feel so much towards the characters by the end. But in this, I felt nothing at all and that made me not care about any of their stories, their issues, or their character arcs (if there were any).
I’m also a little disappointed that in three different stories that are about holiday romance and could have explored a whole range of possibilities, all three of them seem to be white hetero stories which is a little sad. There was so much room to have a good gay romance in there, but nope. (I’ve heard the Netflix film adaptation, which I’m yet to watch, makes up for this. I’ll have to watch it soon and report back.)
Believe it or not, I don’t want to turn absolutely everyone off reading this book. I firmly believe that everyone’s opinions can be wildly different and that’s completely okay. (Within reason.) So even though I didn’t like this book, that doesn’t mean you won’t! It just, unfortunately, wasn’t for me.
Click the links below to find out more or buy a copy of the book:
Note: These are affiliate links, meaning if you buy a book through one of these links, I get a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting Wonderfully Bookish!
Pin this for later:
