Another Christmas novel I read in January: Holiday Romance by Catherine Walsh #Ireland #Christmas #Romance

Yesterday I talked about a wonderful book called Snowed In, and today I decided to tell you about it’s prequel. As I happened to read this first installment in the series after it’s sequel, and my review reflects on that, I decided it would be the best to post my reviews in that order as well.
So here it is…

Holiday Romance is the first book in the Fitzpatrick Christmas series and it was published on September 29th 2022. The book was published by Bookouture and it has 354 pages.

About the book:

FROM GOODREADS /

She’s meant to be catching flights, not catching feelings…

Molly and Andrew are just trying to get home to Ireland for the holidays, when a freak snowstorm grounds their flight.

Nothing romantic has ever happened between them: they’re friends and that’s all. But once a year, for the last ten years, Molly has spent seven hours and fifteen minutes sitting next to Andrew on the last flight before Christmas from Chicago to Dublin, drinking terrible airplane wine and catching up on each other’s lives. In spite of all the ways the two friends are different, it’s the holiday tradition neither of them has ever wanted to give up.

Molly isn’t that bothered by Christmas, but—in yet another way they’re total opposites—Andrew is a full-on fanatic for the festive season and she knows how much getting back to Ireland means to him. So, instead of doing the sane thing and just celebrating the holidays together in America, she does the stupid thing. The irrational thing. She vows to get him home. And in time for his mam’s famous Christmas dinner.

The clock is ticking. But Molly always has a plan. And—as long as the highly-specific combination of taxis, planes, boats, and trains all run on time—it can’t possibly go wrong.

What she doesn’t know is that, as the snow falls over the city and over the heads of two friends who are sure they’re not meant to be together, the universe might just have a plan of its own…

Review:

I recently read Snowed In, which is the sequel to this novel that I haven’t read prior, and right after I finished it, I knew I didn’t want to say goodbye to the characters I happen’ to like so much. Snowed In was my “book to close the season with”, but it felt like torture waiting until November to read Holiday Romance, so season was longer than planned, because Holiday Romance had to be read ASAP.

The writing style was amazing. Fun and pure escapism in a tiny little book. It’s not a remedy, but I would call it a cure for bad days.
I mean, if you had a bad day, I am sure this book would make it a little better.

What is different with this book when I compare it to Snowed In, this one was written only following one POV, Molly’s, and it was written in first person (my personal preference).

We follow Molly and Andrew, their story being told in two different time frames, one following present and the other following a decade of Molly and Andrew’s travelling to Ireland for Christmases.

It was such a good experience to witness how these two people that knew each other developed their relationship into friendship, and than into romance.

The only thing I had hard time to understand was how Molly, even though she traveled all the way to Ireland to her family, had no problem to ditch them to be with Andrew. Like, wasn’t she out of her mind to be with them??
But than again, when it comes to true love, I guess the need to be with your guy is even bigger than to see your mum or sister who you didn’t see for sooooooo long.

I also want to mention that my favorite person in this book was Andrew’s causin who’s name I already forgot, but his personality will stay with me for (I hope) long.
Chapters with him were the funniest.

In the end, I want to say that Holiday Romance was the perfect book to ’tis the season with, and is example how a good holiday romance should be written.