I don't think I'm going to finish this book. Misguided, poorly developed. No sympathy for the main character is engendered by the narrative. ( )

Tori Hammond is approaching her second Christmas in a row without a girlfriend, but she's not going to let that happen again. With a month until the holiday - her favorite day of the year - she signs up with a dating app and works hard to find someone, with the support of her best friend and roommate Holly. Much to her surprise, after a disastrous blind date, Tori chances upon the love-of-her-life from high school after a rather messy split and ten years apart. And then it's as if fate has decided that since they have met once, they will keep meeting, as they run into each other over and over again the following days. Nicola isn't exactly right for Tori - she's engaged to be married at New Year's, for one thing - but none of the other dates are working out, either, and that first love is a strong pull.

Unfortunately, the story is thoroughly mediocre. There's not a lot of emotion anywhere, lots of flat characters, and the prose itself is tedious and mechanical. It's very up on pop culture of 2015 with specific celebrities or name brands mentioned very often, which is something I dislike. It feels dated even while those references are still current - perhaps because it takes it out of the fantasy romance for me? but it could just be clumsy prose, which there is a lot of. (Is "hence" a Londoner dialect word? because it shows up a lot in odd places that I feel bad for criticizing if it's a legitimate dialect difference, and the prose is decidedly English rather than American or somewhere in between.)

Tori is awful to her friends and honestly I didn't like her much or want her to find a happily ever after, because I never had enough of an emotional connection to root for her. Even the elements that should have softened or rounded out her character to create that connection were too stiff or perfunctory to really work. Nicola was telegraphed a hundred ways to Sunday as being an inappropriate love interest and maybe even not a good person, but she also didn't have any attractive qualities, so it was confusing about why Tori kept getting drawn to her, beyond the nostalgic crush. Many of the revelations about her were also never followed up on, making her feel even more of a cardboard-villain. The actual love interest was equally bland - at least, I thought she was the most interesting character in the book, but she never got to show much of her personality outside of supporting Tori and reacting to Tori. I have no idea what kind of person she is, except that she's tall (apparently being butch in appearance is a personality trait?) and likes football and beer, but I want to know more about her. When the story started hinting that she would be the final HEA, it was so contrary to what had previously been said that I just couldn't feel the spark or any investment, and I sort of hoped those clumsy hints and foreshadowings were red herrings for a different love interest. Also, the sex scenes were not at all sexy. I ended up skipping ahead in my kindle without even skimming them to find the end, like I normally would, because even skimming the sex paragraphs was off-putting.

Frankly, I would say this is not a particularly good example of f/f romance, except I haven't read very many. This is one of the first real (not fanfiction) novels I've read, so I don't feel I can say - maybe they do tend to be completely mediocre, and this is a good one. It's not terrible, and I think with improved prose and pacing, even the unlikable Tori would be sympathetic, and from Amazon reviews it's clear that many readers do like her and the story. Plus, it's a Christmas theme, and lots of people go for that. ( )