5, 4 and 3.5 Stars for All I Want For Christmas by Clare Lydon #FF #Holiday @clarelydon

Title: All I Want For Christmas
Author Name: Clare Lydon
Publication Date & Length: October 22, 2015 – 258 pgs

This Christmas, Tori Hammond is on a mission to find love. Her ideal present under the tree would be a shiny new girlfriend, so Tori gives herself one month to find that special lady by December 25th. Christmas spells romance and she’s going to grab some.
However, Tori’s dates bring their own complications, and when someone unexpected strolls back into her life, her Christmas girlfriend quest is turned upside down. Will Tori land on her feet and find the woman of her dreams? And if she does, will it be who she expected?
From the author of Amazon No.1 best-sellers London Calling, This London Love and The Long Weekend, Clare Lydon has created another page-turner bursting with seasonal attitude and wit. If you’re a fan of Christmas rom-coms, prepare to laugh out loud and be swept off your festive feet!

Tori loves Christmas with a passion and the only thing that would make it better is to share it with a girlfriend this year.  With a month to go she signs up to a dating app and so the quest begins.
Her hilarious forays into the lesbian online dating scene are a delight and totally madcap.  Holly, Tori’s flatmate, is ever supportive but something seems to be on her mind.  When a blast from the past turns up all gorgeous and interested, it causes friction between the two best friends.

This is a terrific read and I loved every page of it.  The London setting was excellent as I could picture all the places they went.  It was so well written and absorbing that I couldn’t put it down.  It is a real feel-good story with characters I loved and I came away from it with a huge grin on my face.  A Christmas cracker of a read and so deserving of 5 Stars!

Kitty Kat

This was a sweet holiday romance, that made me want to smack the main character upside the head. Tori seems to be a sensible woman, ready to start dating again after the end of her last relationship. It’s a surprise then, that she does so many unimaginably stupid things. The catalyst for this departure from reality? Her first love, Nicola Sheen, who broke Tori’s heart after their first lesbian kiss in high school. Apparently, Tori has unresolved feelings, and is willing to do quite a lot to relive the memories and feelings of her first love. The problem? Nic is the fiance of one of Tori’s friends.

Tori starts the book by decided to get herself a girlfriend by Christmas, which gives her a month to find, date, and girlfriend a woman. The dates she finds herself on are sometimes funny, and sometimes a sad commentary on the reality of online dating. But it’s her reunion with Nic that throws everything into turmoil. And she finds herself doing things she knows are wrong. Like kissing someone who’s engaged to marry someone else. Like doing other things with that same person. Like offering a gift she’s giving her best friend to that someone else. All of which not only made me cringe a bit inside, but seriously wish I could be there to smack her head when she does stupid stuff like that.

The end is well telegraphed. Tori ends up with the person you think she’ll end up with, and thank goodness, because that person definitely deserved some happiness after all of Tori’s drama. Still, I kept expecting something more to happen with Nic in those last few chapters, not because they should have, or that I wanted them to, but because that was the kind of poor judgment and decision-making Tori trained me to expect. All in all, the book was a nice story. But Tori made me want to hit her. Not sure that’s a win.

~AmyP

I really enjoyed the opening banter between the two main characters. As the book continued I liked the message it sent  regarding how our true friends know us without us having to vocalise it.

A modern and up to date novel, mentioning the lack of gay bars in London as well as using modern and humorous idioms when describing girls names.

This was a feel good novel with quite a few amusing antidotes, easy to read and a nice seasonal stocking filler.

My only criticism was the ending, it was so obvious what was going to occur right from the opening chapter.

~Chris

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Clare Lydon is a London-based author who penned her first novel at primary school and it scored 9.5/10. She’s still not sure what she was docked half a point for. A lack of lesbians perhaps? Her mission in life now is to rectify that mistake, by publishing a series of contemporary romance novels with lesbian protagonists. Hurray!

Clare’s most recent novel, This London Love, is spin-off of Clare’s first novel, London Calling. It follows the story of Kate Carter, a single designer who meets Meg Harding, a florist. Two jaded hearts, one death, a tsunami of flowers and a host of surprises. Can they hurdle their past to embrace their future?

Clare has also written two other novels – London Calling and The Long Weekend. If you read them, please leave a review to let others know what you think!

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