The Mistletoe Promise Review

Hey guys,

I hope everyone's having an amazing weekend. Its pretty snowy and cold where I live, so I've been enjoying spending time baking in my kitchen, and curling up with books. I know its quite a bit past Christmas, but I'm the type of person that can honestly read Christmas books all year long, and it's a Christmas book that I'm going to be reviewing today, as you can tell from the post title, The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans.

                                                                            For anyone unfamiliar with this particular book, here is the blurb from goodreads: 

                                                                                                                                                                 "A love story for Christmas from the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box and The Walk.

Elise Dutton dreads the arrival of another holiday season. Three years earlier, her husband cheated on her with her best friend, resulting in a bitter divorce that left her alone, broken, and distrustful.

Then, one November day, a stranger approaches Elise in the mall food court. Though she recognizes the man from her building, Elise has never formally met him. Tired of spending the holidays alone, the man offers her a proposition. For the next eight weeks—until the evening of December 24—he suggests that they pretend to be a couple. He draws up a contract with four rules:

1. No deep, probing personal questions
2. No drama
3. No telling anyone the truth about the relationship
4. The contract is void on Christmas Day

The lonely Elise surprises herself by agreeing to the idea. As the charade progresses, the safety of her fake relationship begins to mend her badly broken heart. But just as she begins to find joy again, her long-held secret threatens to unravel the emerging relationship. But she might not be the only one with secrets."

 

I will preface this review by saying that I was really excited to read this one. I've previously read The Christmas Box by this same author. I really enjoyed that one, and I've always been a fan of the short Christmas books by Donna VanLiere, so I was expecting this to be something like that. I really did enjoy reading this book, it just wasn't quite the sweet, holiday read I was anticipating.

 

Elise Dutton, the main character, is plagued with huge regret from something that happened in her past several years ago. It led to the end of her marriage, her friendships, and the need to alienate herself from everyone, as she doesn't feel she deserves to be close to anyone anymore. The Christmas season is the worst in her opinion, she spends it alone, and hates watching how happy everyone else is throughout the holidays. Then out of the blue one day, a stranger, Nicholas Derr, approaches her in the cafeteria and proposes "A Mistletoe Promise." A way for them to help each other out over the holidays. They'll each have a guaranteed date to office Christmas parties, and someone to partake in all the holiday festivities with. After which, they'll each go their own way with no hard feelings.

 

Of course there ends up being much more to the situation than the initial agreement suggests, and the relationship blossoms into a deeper friendship than either could ever imagine. Elise never feels good enough to be Nicholas' friend, as she has deep skeletons in her closet, and also feels they're on two different spectrums on the lifestyle scale; she works for a travel agency that arranges educational trips for high schoolers, and he's a partner in a high powered law firm. I really enjoyed watching the chemistry develop between these characters, and also, I really enjoyed seeing how they each brought each other out of their shell. From finding each other, they found there way back to life. And it was especially amazing to see the way Nicholas' confidence in Elise helped her to open up more to her fellow co workers, and see that there is more to life than just dragging by. From the synopsis, the reader was obviously informed that there was more to Nicholas' story than he originally let on, and I felt this connection between them helped them be able to relate to each other even more, but definitely wasn't the sweet, holiday romance I was expecting out of this book.

 

In conclusion, I gave this book 4/5 stars as it was a truly beautiful read about how the scars of the past can prohibit a future unless you learn how to forgive yourself, but definitely be prepared that this book is not a sweet, simple holiday story, it definitely has it's darker moments, but is definitely worth the read.

 

My favorite quote from this book was: "Often what we see clearest in others is what we most avoid seeing in ourselves."

 

I really think this quote summed up the overall theme of this book, and it was truly a beautiful quote that really got me thinking about life in general.

 

Thanks for reading everyone, and I will hopefully be back soon with more bookish ramblings :)

 

This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own. The picture was taken by me with an iPhone.