#TsundokuSquad Book of the Month- January (SPOILERS)

Hello!

In my last post I introduced the #TsundokuSquad book club I am a part of and today I am going to share our views on our first book! We chose Love at the Northern Lights by Darcie Boleyn. We read about 25% of the book every week and talked about it at the weekend.

Goodreads blurb:

‘Climbing out the window in her dress and tiara wasn’t exactly how Frankie imagined her wedding day…’

Runaway bride Frankie Ashford hops a plane to Norway with one goal in mind - find her estranged mother and make peace with the past. But when a slip on the ice in Oslo lands her directly in Jonas Thorsen’s viking-strong arms, her single-minded focus drifts away in the winter winds.

When it comes to romance Jonas knows that anything he and Frankie share has an expiration date - the British heiress has a life to return to in London that’s a world away from his own. But family is everything to Jonas and, as the one man who can help Frankie find the answers she’s seeking, he’ll do whatever it takes to help her reunite with her mother.

Now, as Christmas draws closer and the northern lights work their magic Frankie and Jonas will have to make a choice...play it safe or risk heartbreak to take a chance on love.

Tsundoku Squad rating: 2*

My rating: 2*

Its average Goodreads rating is 4.1* so we had high hopes for this and thought we were going to get a good romance but it fell flat for all of us. The book started off decently, diving straight into the story with the drama of Frankie's wedding day coming up and then she's off to Oslo, Norway to try and find her mother. The description of Norway sounded beautiful and we talked about how we would all love to visit Norway one day and see the northern lights. We were expecting to enjoy more scenery of Norway and discover the culture throughout the book but unfortunately this was forgotten about.

This is when the book started to go downhill. Frankie finally meets her mum in her gallery and they both pretend they don't know each other and go out for dinner with this huge elephant in the room and refuse to talk about it for days? And when they do talk about it there is no arguing or anything negative and we all felt that the reactions for all the past events were very unrealistic and that the book needed some drama to make things more interesting. None of the characters were even likable and we were hoping that the Gran would cause some trouble but even she seemed to have had a personality transplant towards the end and had transformed from a horrible, controlling woman into a meek, old woman.

This book could have done with some more drama instead of the characters just accepting everything that happened without any proper talks and we would have liked to have seen more about Norway.

This review is just our thoughts on the book and of course we don't want to deter anyone else from reading the book! it is under 300 pages and a quick and easy read and it does have a high rating on Goodreads so may be the book for someone else. Unfortunately this book was not for us but we are looking forward to reading more books together and February's pick is Paris by Starlight by Robert Dinsdale.