<i>I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review</i>
Mistletoe Pact is about two friends, Evie and Dan, who made a pact to marry each other when they reach their thirties and if they're both single.

The first chapter of the book narrated the incident of being drunk together in Vegas and how the two decided to marry there. I really thought the book will talk more about how the two characters would work up their "marriage" but the book decided to took a different path wherein some chapters were flashbacks of Dan & Evie's life for the past years. It highlights their relationship with their family and friends and how both their families are close to each other and how they celebrate Christmas together.

What I love about this book is it does not only focus on Evie & Dan's love story (which is a very slow-paced friend to lovers trope, btw) but it also features different kinds of love- love of friends, love of siblings, love of family. I also love the uniqueness of featuring Evie's familial setup where she was raised by her mother alone and how she was completely okay with it.

Overall, this was such a good Christmas read and I also enjoyed Dan's narrative. I just hate him sometimes for being insensitive to Evie's feelings and how the wait was so long after their pact.

4.25 stars rounded up!

I really enjoyed this one. It’s the second book of Lovett’s that I’ve read and it did not disappoint. I fall in love with the characters of her books so easily. I want to be friends with the female lead (and her friends) and I could see myself falling for the male lead. I love the cover but the male lead’s description did not match his picture AT ALL which threw me for a bit. I liked how the Christmas theme/time weaved it’s way throughout the book. This was a very sweet and fun read!

I loved this book, the only part I found slightly awkward was the year changes but I got used to it as I read through. A definite curl up in front of the fire over the Christmas holiday story.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 3 1/2/5 stars

The age old pact between good friends “if I am not married by the time I’m 30, then we’ll marry!” This story begins at age 30, then goes back in time several years and looks at the “will they, won’t they….get on with it already!” relationship between Evie (born on Christmas Eve ~ get it?) and Dan.

What I liked:
•a fun British Romance with likable characters.
•the in depth look at all the relationships you have in your life that impact your choice in partners.
•I really loved the imperfect, relatable family dynamics, especially Evie and her mother Jenny, and baby sister Autumn (my favorite character in the book!) But also Dan and his brother Max.
•POV from both Dan & Evie so you definitely know what’s really going on
•This has a cute Christmas title, but could be enjoyed any time of year!

What I didn’t like:
•because the time jumps were all close together, I often had to look back to see where we were in time. I think I would have preferred ONE leap backwards then a continuous timeline forward.
•I felt the romance/conflict/romance pattern was a little off, but I was always rooting for Evie & Dan.

Thank you to author Jo Lovett, @netgalley and @bookouture for this ARC! Congratulations on the release of a lovely book just in time for the holidays on October 1, 2021!

Book 52 of 2021
Read 9/12-9/23

@shawna_reading_for_life

Unfortunately, this one just didn't work for me. :( I'm so bummed, because I was looking forward to a fun, upbeat romance filled with Christmas spirit. What I got was a long, drawn out novel with a love triangle/cheating plot that felt infused for the sake of extra drama.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. •

I didn’t like this book at all.. & I feel really bad saying that.

I could not handle the dialogue for starters, it was like they characters just rambled constantly.

The timeline was all messy.

& the whole never actually telling each other they like each other for YEARS. I just couldn’t deal with them.

I think it could of been a cute book, it just didn’t go the way I thought it should go, & the characters were just not it for me.

I did love the Christmas theme.

Adored the Christmas setting. Excited to re-read this book to get in the Christmas spirit. 4/5 stars

As a lover of all things Christmas I was ready to start the colder months with this seasonal read.

Admittedly, the storyline started strong and I enjoyed the fast pace with which the story began, however the pace did taper off quite substantially a few chapters in.

One thing I wasn’t too keen on was that whilst the book was written in two perspectives (which I usually love) they were also both written in third person which I found a bit odd. I also did not take too keenly to Dan, the male main character and I found him to be quite whiney and difficult to relate to.

That being said, the relationship between Evie and Dan was believable and the growth of both characters was fun to read. Jo did a really good job of building the tension for the reader so that you were turning the pages regardless of the predictability of the book, just so you could find out how the story truly ends.

Overall, it was a good read and I would recommend this to a friend as a feel good, seasonal, easy read.

*Thanks to Bookoture/Net Galley for this ARC*

I was hooked after the 1st chapter! Light~hearted Christmas read. I throughly enjoyed it.I would recommend this book to anyone who loves romance and Christmas.

The Mistletoe Pact brings you a cute friends to lovers stories but despite the name not a lot of Christmas spirit.

Evie and Dan, her best friend's brother, have always admired each other from afar and one Christmas make a pact that on Evie's 30th birthday if they're both single they will get married. Fast forward 10 years and the make good on the pact Rachel and Ross Vegas style and then get a quickie annulment when they realize what they've done.

What follows is a dual timeline between present day and past hangouts between the two main characters. The POV also switches between the two characters making it sometimes hard to follow exactly where you are in the story.

Both Evie and Dan go through some growing pains and I did end up liking the end but the meandering to get there at times felt a little slow to me. With a title like this I also expected more Christmas but there were only slight nods to the holiday with Evie's birthday also being Christmas Eve it made it more about that than the actual holiday.

If you really enjoy friends to lovers, stories that take place in quaint English towns then you might enjoy this one. Otherwise you may want to skip!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Christmasy Hallmark Channel vibes mixed with What Happens in Vegas and a pact to marry if still single by 30. A fun escape, enjoyable read.

This story of two long-time friends with secret crushes on each other is maybe a little bit predictable, but I loved it. Evie and Dan are smart and funny, the supporting characters are likable and caring. Their relationships and living situations seem real and relatable. The Christmas setting, the village in the Cotswolds, the engaging story, it all worked for me.

I had such high hopes for this book, but unfortunately it just didn't live up to any of the expectations I had.

I quite enjoyed the storyline and the writing, but I just couldn't keep the different years apart (pretty much every chapter is dedicated to a different year in Evie and Dan's friendship). Everything started to bleed together and I couldn't keep track of what actually happens in 2021 and what happened in the past years.

Also, I was so annoyed by the minimal communication between the main characters. I might not have been in a relationship yet, but I'm pretty sure that if you've been crushing on someone for a while, you mention it or actually ask them out on a date. Communication is key, and this book was sorely lacking in that department.

I did enjoy the dynamic between Evie and Dan, which is probably what kept me reading until the end. But honestly, this book fell flat to me and wasn't as exciting and enticing as I'd hoped...

The book starts out when Evie wakes up and realizes she married her best friend Dan in Vegas. They made a pact with each other years before to marry if they both were still single when Evie turned thirty. Sounded really cute. I was excited to read this, but the beginning is literally the best part of the book. The story was very disjointed and I was so surprised in the direction it went. It seemed as though there was zero chemistry between the main characters after the initial chapters and the explaining of the “Mistletoe Pact” in the beginning. Evie and Dan head in completely different directions in the storyline. In fact Evie has another boyfriend, Matthew, and we find out Dan is having a baby with another woman named Hannah. At this point you cannot get me on board that they have any romantic feelings toward each other or that the relationship can be salvaged, because mainly both seem happy away from each other. Too much time apart and relationships with other people, which might have been a plausible story arc if Evie and Dan seemed like they wanted to be around each other.
They just didn’t. I felt this continually since they were always running into one another. This happened to be quite often since Dan’s sister, Sasha, was also one of Evie best friends. Dan and Evie always seemed so indifferent toward each other. So much so, that at more than halfway through I was stunned to read that Dan felt like kissing Evie?! Wait, what?!
Confusing and very much makes a reader feel that everything is “told” and not “ felt.” Evie and Dan eventually do end up together, but it just felt forced and rushed to get them there at the end. I had a hard time finishing this one. Was such a cute premise and the start was encouraging. It just fizzled from there.

People get into fallback pacts as a joke, right? Surely neither party ever has any real feelings. Right? Well, all our rom-com knowledge gathered over the years enables us to the answer to this one quite well.

Evie Green has forever had a massive crush on her best friend’s elder brother Dan Marshall. Little did she know that Dan reciprocated those feelings ever since they made their fallback pact. Over the next few years, work and life in general keeps them busy enough to meet up hardly once a year for Christmas. All the while, both of them have their fair share of dating but that doesn’t stop either of them from thinking about the other every now and then.

To top this off, a totally not-sober situation ends up in a Vegas wedding and a quick annulment.

The Mistletoe Pact is such an easy and fun-loving read. The characters are all well-developed and more than capable of keeping up with witty banter. The tension between Evie and Dan is everything it is supposed to be and that made their story one of instant love and slow-burn at the same time. The back and forth between the past and the present lends the story it’s pace and keeps it interesting. There are a lot of light, funny moments while there are also moments that tug at emotions making the story warm and wholesome.

A massive thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for this eARC.

I took me a lot to get into this book, and I unfortunately never really cared all that much about the main characters. I feel like a lot of the issues could have been solved with a very good and straightforward conversation between the two main characters at the beginning of the book.

I heard such great things about Jo's previous novel, and the premise of The Mistletoe Pact was highly appealing, so I couldn't resist this one! It's very well written, with unexpected 'hidden depths', and hits all the right romantic notes - highly recommended!

This book sounded right up my alley. Every year around Christmas I love watching all the Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas movies, so I can handle my fair share of cheesy romances. This is that in book form!

I did enjoy the characters and relationships but it got a bit frustrating that the two main characters wouldn’t just talk to each other honestly. There really wasn’t anything standing in their way of a relationship, since they both wanted it. This miscommunication seemed a little excessive for two 30 year-old adults!

Right... I definitely didn't expect to end up having this reaction to The Mistletoe Pact. I loved the sound of the blurb and it seemed like it would be a perfect Christmassy and light romcom to read in between my thrillers; sadly, the actual story is by no means the fun and uplifting holiday read it promises to be. There is a saying that if you don't have anything nice to say, better say nothing at all... So I'm going to keep my rambles short and only state briefly what didn't work for me to avoid these rambles turning into a full blown rant.

Oh yes, there is no doubt that The Mistletoe Pact and me didn't get along. There were so many elements that didn't work for me that I feel that it's a miracle I even made it to the end... And I kind of wish I didn't waste the time, because sadly the ending didn't even make up for the rest of the story. To keep things short, this story is neither light and fun nor properly Christmas themed. Instead, it's mostly a story where the two main characters are constantly pining over each other and neither realizes for a loooooong time that the other might have the same feelings. On top of this, the whole plot has both a love triangle and cheating vibe and that was just a huge turn off for me.

The story is told in a dual POV structure, which I normally do enjoy as long as the main characters are interesting and the different views are important to the plot. But guess what? I wasn't impressed by either of the main characters, and both Dan and Evie felt a bit flat and repetitive to me. Not to mention self absorbed, highly frustrating and especially Evie with questioning moral behavior. I initially liked the present timeline with the Las Vegas wedding and the aftermath, but instead of building on that aftermath, The Mistletoe Pact mainly focuses on the past and has a lot of confusing flashbacks where you struggle to determine where in time the characters are and I think it distracted from the present situation too.

On top of this, it seemed like random plot twists, tropes and cliches were incorporated into the plot to make the story more 'interesting'. Definitely a turn off as I don't like things being made more complicated 'just because' without a proper development or place in the story. I also can't say that I was a fan of the writing itself, which didn't seem to flow all that well and the pace itself was considerably slow in parts.

As a whole, The Mistletoe Pact unfortunately turned out to be a real dud for me. Which is such a shame, because I was really looking forward to an uplifting Christmas romance!

This eARC was given to me via NetGalley for an honest review.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t the best book I have read but it had its moments. I really enjoyed how you got to see Evie and Dan’s relationship evolve over the years and how it changed in the present. It did give me Hallmark like movie vibes, which is what the book was going for.

Is this book perfect? No. I had a few issues with the pacing of it. But is it enjoyable? Yes it is.

Once again, thank you NetGalley for letting me read this book. It did get me into the holiday spirit.