This is a light read that's easy to fly through in a few hours, and I think anyone who enjoys Christmas romances will like it. I liked it just fine myself, though I had a few qualms:
1) Graham, the protagonist, constantly vacillates between things, and there are several instances where he exhibits jerk-like behavior (to Piper, to Sarah, to his parents, to Sarah's parents...), though I guess I'll chalk this attitude up to simply being a teenage boy.
2) The romance between Graham and Piper felt underdeveloped, almost like insta-love. The group scenes with Graham, Piper, Sarah, and Jeremy, however, added a nice bit of drama.
3) The way that Graham gets his original life back at the end is a bit jarring/confusing; I wasn't expecting religion to feature so prominently, as it isn't discussed much at the start/middle of the book.

I need to stop trusting covers and cute blurbs.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tons of people are going to like this. It’s lighthearted. It’s got that fun Christmas vibe. It has moderately likeable characters. However...

I couldn’t get into this. I went in expecting a light-hearted story about a young guy who realizes that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, but it turned into something a lot different.

Graham (the MC) has been obsessed with ‘the girl next door’ Sarah since the day he met her (when they were like like 6, because a 6 year old understands ‘love’) but she’s dating Graham’s best friend, and is very happy. Graham is of course jealous and wants to be the one dating Sarah. It’s a pretty basic storyline. I wasn’t expecting deep philosophical thoughts here.

HOWEVER. After wishing on a shooting star (or praying, or getting a miracle - it depends which chapter you’re reading) Graham wakes up and has been dating Sarah for the past two years. Graham then proceeds to act like a complete idiot, ask stupid questions and ignore Sarah to flirt with bookstore girl, Piper.

90% of the book is literally Graham going on not-dates with Piper, meeting Sarah to kiss him and convince himself this is the girl for him, and then telling us over (and over and over and over) again that if he wasn’t meant to be with Sarah then the wish (or prayer or miracle) wouldn’t have come true.

Graham is one of the most annoying MCs I’ve read in awhile. He constantly picks apart Sarah’s decisions, rarely compliments her and never does anything to address her jealousy (except continue to ignore her to spend time with Piper). At one point he joins Sarah’s family (WHO HATE HIM, BTW) in a tree decorating competition, and then because they’re taking it too seriously, he’s a completely d*ck and doesn’t even try. He then tries to blame Sarah’s family for being too serious about the competition. No wonder her family hates him. He’s known Sarah for most of his life, has been dating her for two years and acts like that around her family? I hate him on behalf of her family.

Graham makes no effort to be a partner in his relationship with Sarah. They never talk. He snaps at her about everything. He constantly insults her (over her diet). They never discuss anything of value and he still thinks that they’re made to be together.

Anywhy, while Graham is supposed to be dating the girl of his dreams he’s actually spending a ton of time with Piper because of convoluted reasons that were absolutely unnecessary. They have to build some stupid float for the stupid Christmas parade (this never really pays off and was honestly just a plot point to force Piper and Graham to spend time together). Graham and Piper end up spending countless hours alone and of course Graham lusts after her. He refuses to talk to Sarah (or Piper) and continues to date Sarah while flirting with Piper. He feels guilty for a few seconds, but never long enough to do anything about it.

At one point Piper and Graham get into some fight. I don’t even remember. Sarah and Graham get into a fight. It’s all painfully obvious from the get-go how things are going to end.

EXCEPT IT ISN’T. I’m still BEYOND irritated by how the book handled this whole ‘wish fulfillment’ aspect.

So, the idea is that you don’t really know people as well as you think and that it’s easy to idolize people beyond who they are, yadda, yadda, yadda… But then it becomes about saving a life???

I’m not going to include spoilers, but the whole thing takes a weird tone shift and gets VERY RELIGIOUS and Graham ends up praying and asking for a miracle and then the whole thing is about what God wants and it was… odd.

Then Graham just wakes up and it’s the day after he wished on the star and he ends up dating Piper and no one learned anything.

The blurb specifically says that Graham and Sarah bring out the worst in each other, but that’s not true. Depending on how you look at it, Graham pushed Sarah to have bigger dreams. She actually had goals and ambitions, but then I guess those weren’t her ideas because they were Graham’s? It was never explained in a convincing manner. These kids are 16 and literally had no lives outside of Christmastown. They had no hobbies, no goals, no ambitions. They were so boring. Then Graham and Sarah have ambitions, but I guess they were too big? If you’re confused, don’t worry, the book doesn’t really explain any better than I am right now.

I guess the book wants you to believe that having big dreams and making sacrifices for those dreams is bad. And you should want to stay in your small town forever. (shrug - I honestly don’t know)

There are some LOOOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG sentences in this book. Literal thought vomit coming from Graham’s head. Most of it is completely pointless and rambling and adds pretty much nothing to the narrative. There’s a long run-on sentence about how Graham doesn’t have a car, but it’s okay because everything in town is only ten minutes away but then later they have to walk for 15 minutes to get somewhere… so I’m confused.

There are also some gross sexualizations of Piper throughout the story. First, Graham is INSANELY jealous of some random guy who gets coffee with Piper (please remember that he’s in no way shape or form, responsible for Piper or her actions or are they dating), but then we also get stuff like this:
skinny jeans that are so tight they’re practically illegal in thirty-nine states
She looks like Santa’s daughter, if Santa’s daughter went to private school during the week and rock concerts on the weekends. The kind of girl that makes a guy bow down and say, “We’ve not worthy.”
I have to fight the urge to shout at her to change before she gives some guy - the kind of guy who would think he’s not only worth but that he somehow deserves the right to use and abuse her until he’s done with her - the wrong idea.
“You know how those guys are… They see a girl in a skirt and boots, and suddenly they lose all brain function.”
[she] swipes her finger over the whipped cream and licks it off, completely unaware that half the guys in the room just dropped their ice creams on themselves.

All this sexualization of Piper is gross. Just because Graham has perverted thoughts about Piper doesn’t mean every guy in a 400 mile radius also has the same thoughts. It was gross to read this kind of stuff over and over and over again.

Piper attracts the wrong kind of attention because she’s wearing a skirt and you can see her knees, but Sarah walks out with her sweater hanging off her shoulder and she’s the most precious thing in the world.

The book really misses the mark for me because at no point does Graham TRY to be a better boyfriend to Sarah. The only time he tells her to think about her future is AFTER the big blowup at the dance. And it’s WELL after he’s decided he’s in lust with Piper.

The world-building is flimsy at best. This is supposed to be the magical town of Christmas, but it sounds like pretty much any small town that gets all festive during the holidays (it more or less screamed Stars Hollow from GIlmore Girls - we’re a quirky smalltown who does everything at 500% all the time, but the only thing we do is Christmas).

I wanted this to be a cute book about finding yourself and realizing that what you think is best isn’t always the best.

I wanted Graham to put as much effort into spending time with his girlfriend as he did his not-girlfriend. I WANTED GRAHAM TO GROW A BACKBONE AND HAVE A REAL CONVERSATION WITH ANYONE instead of just moping and whining when things went wrong.

Dropping me into Graham and Sarah’s relationship (two years in) and then having Graham act like he got a personality transplant bothered me. Obviously something was going right for them to be together for two years, but Graham never tried to get to know the new Sarah. He didn’t actually want the new Sarah, he wanted the old Sarah, but for her to be with him and want his dreams. As the reader I never got the impression he cared about Sarah. He lied to her, went out of his way to annoy her and acted like an idiot 90% of the time he spent with her.

I never liked Sarah as a person. Old Sarah knew how Graham felt about her and used it to her advantage to essentially get a second boyfriend who would step in whenever she needed anything. She never had a real personality and I found her incredibly boring. The new Sarah had the goal of becoming a ballet dancer and whined about everything. She was tiring. Even after all the drama between Graham and Sarah she STILL REFUSES TO LET HIM GO. She can’t imagine not having him as a friend, blah blah blah. Sarah was a selfish manipulator who wanted a boyfriend but kept Graham around to use as her emotional punching bag.

Piper was pretty boring too. Aside from being obsessed with Little Woman and being the child of a couple mid-divorce she didn’t really have much going on.
Graham was whiny and annoying. When he wasn’t those things he was sexualizing Piper. Or crying about how his wish had to be right.
Jeremy was just the random guy that was dating Piper. We honestly never to to know him as anything but some random name to drop when needed.

The ENTIRE book can be summed by two quotes FROM the book:
shouldn’t I have been obsessed with Sarah this whole time?

When I take Sarah into my arms, I don’t think about Piper in a fuzzy white sweater in a dusty old barn, the scent of pine needles and jasmine perfume thick around us, her gray eyes deep and vibrant as a storm-wrenched sea. I don’t think about body pressed against mine, her breath fanning my neck, or the sudden desire I felt to run the pad of my thumb over her bottom lip. I focus on Sarah and don’t think about Piper at all.

This was a fun light hearted ya book that I believe many will enjoy. Graham. Where do I even begin? Firstly, I ADORED Graham. He was the perfect male character. Was he flawed? Absolutely! Do I think he was realistic? That’s what made him more the more special to me. Graham had this moments as many male protagonists in ya books do. But this was a given and I think the authors gradual progression of Graham’s character was perfect, it’s rare for me to feel like men in ya books make me swoon but this one did 100% and I believe he will continue to do so. This was a lovely ya book to get me into the holiday season which really isn’t that far at all. It’s something I would definitely pick up again closer to Christmas. This was perfect and I cannot wait to re read this in the near future. It was the perfect holiday read. 5 out of 5 stars!

I tend to stay away from YA romance just because the characters and the storylines tend to be a bit boring but this one delivered! I teared up and fell in love with Graham even though he was frustrating and sometimes I wanted to yell at him. This is a book of a boy growing up and learning what love actually is. That’s all there is to it. I loved every second. Like, literally every second from page 1.

I really enjoyed this one! A lot of times cleaner novels are missing spark - the dialogue’s not snappy, the characters are bland, etc. This one didn’t have that problem…there were parts that made me snort-laugh and I read the book straight through because I was enjoying the story so much. Would definitely read this author again!