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Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe
by Jenny Bayliss
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We went to SF yesterday since we had a break in the rain and went to the Exploratorium. If you are ever visiting check it out! My girls love it, it’s all science experiments and tinkering.
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Nory is going back to her hometown for a wedding and the holidays. She has to deal with her posh friends from the academy she attended and her working class brother who is one of their vendors for the gathering.
She has to come face to face with another childhood friend who she had a crush and a rivalry with.
There are a lot of grown up issues happening within her friend circle. It seems when big life events are happening and alcohol is involved other issues tend to be brought up.
Nory and Isaac were spending a lot of time together and it was a bit of a slow burn due to her brother asking him to stay away. Her friends kind of made comments about him since he was the gardener.
This is set in England who has a different class and wealth structure than we do in the US so relationships and preconceived notions are all there.
Nory had a lot of outside factors constantly influencing her decisions and she wants her family and her friends to be happy with her. But they are both very different.
Guy was the reason why I put the book down cause I can’t stand guys like that. But I tried again and luckily he wasn’t a big character in her story. He had a lot to struggle through cause he was a douche who didn’t appreciate what he had but he didn’t do what he did in the beginning again.
I see people complaining about it not really being about Christmas. Most of the winter holiday books I read didn’t feel like there was a lot of Christmas in them. They are set around the holidays but that holiday is just one day. You do a bunch of other things in December/January too.

❓ Do you have anything planned for NYE?
We are going to my Aunt’s a couple hours away.

Thank you @duttonbooks and @netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Synopsis:

A city bookshop owner heads to the English countryside for a holiday reunion—only to face her childhood enemy.

Elinor Noel—Nory for short—is quite content running her secondhand bookshop in London. Forever torn between her working-class upbringing and her classmates’ extravagant lifestyles at the posh private school she attended on scholarship, Nory has finally figured out how to keep both at equal distance. So when two of her oldest friends invite their whole gang to spend the time leading up to their wedding together at the castle near their old school, Nory must prepare herself for an emotionally complicated few days.

The reunion brings back fond memories, but also requires Nory to dodge an ill-advised former fling. When she falls quite literally into the arms of Isaac, the castle’s head gardener, who has nothing but contempt for the “snobby prep school kids,” the attraction between them is undeniable. And as Nory spends more time with Isaac during the wedding festivities, she finds herself falling hard for the boy she used to consider an enemy. Nory and Isaac explore their common ground, but pressures mount on all sides, and Nory must decide what kind of life she wants to live and what sort of love is worth the risk . . .