Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson & Lauren Myracle (Blogmas)

I’ve been putting off this read for a very long time for some reason. When Christmas rolled around, i kept forgetting that this was on my shelf, and trust me, it’s been there a very, very long time now. Finally this Christmas, i picked it up while i was in the mood for an easy, festive read.

All that i knew about Let It Snow was that the three short stories joined together in some way. I had no idea what they were about or what any of the characters were like. It’s quite a difficult thing to review because it’s a whole piece, but it’s also not. All the characters are in all three stories by the three different authors, however all the stories are written differently because of writing styles etc.

First of all, this was my first experience with Maureen Johnson’s writing, and i absolutely adored it. I recently bought Truly Devious by her, and i’m really glad i did so i can pick that up whenever i feel like it. I loved her writing style and how fun her story was. She really developed the characters and set the scene for me. I ended up really loving Julie and Stuart and especially his family. The scenes were set up with a lot of great imagery and without a doubt this story alone would be a five star read for me.

John Green’s story was easily the one i was most excited for. Whereas i liked it, and i liked the characters, it just didn’t have that homely feel like the first one did for me. It’s something i really look for in a Christmas novel, that sense of home and happiness, and a lot of this story was set out in the cold with friends in moods with each other. I really enjoyed the adventure of it and what felt like a Home Alone ‘what else can go wrong?’ trope. It fit really well with the first story for me and i loved John’s writing as much as i always do. By the end i was completely routing for the fluffy relationship.

I’ve seen a lot of reviews for this book saying that the third story lets the book down. I wouldn’t go as far to say that, but i did like it the least. It seemed to have very little direction with a whiny protagonist and i just didn’t really connect to it as much as i would have liked, considering how much i loved the first two thirds of the novel. I didn’t love the cramming together of all the characters at the end, whereas the overlap was good, it was reintroducing pretty much everyone from the last 250 pages and it became really overwhelming for me. I really did enjoy it in the end, however i agree that this story needed the most work out of the three.

Overall this book was a lot of fun, and i can see why a lot of people love it as their yearly festive read. It’s full of cute moments and good friendship with some great family elements. I think i will be re-reading this at some point, it was exactly what i was in the mood for at the time!