One Perfect Christmas – Paige Toon

Synopsis

One Perfect Christmas picks up with Alice and Joe one year on… He’s a bigger star than ever, and Alice has managed to maintain her anonymity. But how long can that last? Will this be their first – and last – perfect Christmas? And where is Lukas?

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My Review

Okay, so the sequel is around 100 pages long, which is a shame as i would have loved it be longer, this is why i have read it in such a short space of time.

You start off a year later with Jessie and Emily – who are Alice’s friends and ex-housemates from One Perfect Summer – who are getting married. Alice is a bridesmaid for Emily and it was lush to read that after 10 years, they were still friends with Alice and Jessie still messing around together like they were still in uni and work. Jessie calls Alice ‘China’ and Alice calls Jessie ‘Weasley’ after Rupert Grint as he has red hair. You really do find the best of friends at university.

At the wedding, you FINALLY get to see who Alice ends up with and i totally squealed when it was revealed. I become far too involved with the characters when i read books. Obviously from the synopsis you know its Joe, but still.

Alice hasn’t seen Joe for three months, due to his busy filming schedule, so when he surprises her at the wedding, she’s ecstatic and Jessie and Emily are just about on the same par as Alice as they have yet to meet him. Alice and Joe’s relationship is still under wraps and Alice still has her anonymity although she has to endure her colleague talking about Joe all the time, which of course, would annoy you if your friend was going on about your boyfriend, even though no one knew you were together. Joe is the one who wants to go public, hating being away from Alice, whereas Alice is a bit more reluctant, as it would mean her whole life and career would be turned upside down.

You finally get to know what happened between Lukas and Alice too, as it rewinds 7 months back. As much as i hated Lukas in One Perfect Summer, we find out he quit his job in Germany, moved back to the UK and is still in love with Alice, forgiving her and wanting her back but as soon as you feel sorry for him, he goes back to the arsehole he was in the first book, which is great because Alice wants him to hate her so he will divorce her.

You can see the love and passion steaming off Alice and Joe, and i totally got drawn in when Alice takes Joe to their house for the first time. although they have been together for a year, it was like they were never apart and that pulled at my heart strings that they still felt the same way after 9 years apart.

There was a lot of jealousy on Alice’s part, which i can understand. Her boyfriend is a big movie star, hes away for months on end and there are so many rumours spreading around about him but then Joe is jealous of Alice when it comes down to her ex-husband and Jessie – who she has a platonic relationship with. They both seem to have issues but when you’re away for months on end, its hard and puts a strain on the relationship but they do talk about it and you can see that whatever issue they have, they can get through it.

Although short and sweet, i really wanted it to be longer. It seemed that although it was meant to tie up some issues from the first book, it just left me wanting more. Like going public, how Alice would cope being thrown into the public eye, the crazy fans etc but I suppose, stopping where it did, even though it was mean, just let the reader ponder over what happened in the future for the both of them.

I’d like to hope that everything ended perfectly between them.