Some Like It Cold by Elle McNicoll
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars
This one had a fun premise, but lost a few things in execution!
Jasper is the black sheep of her family, thanks to her autism, which her mom has basically had her hide since childhood. Her family aims for perfection and focuses on her older sister, Christine, who is getting married on New Year's Eve. Jasper reluctantly returns home to Lake Pristine for the wedding festivities, with the secret knowledge that she's dropping out of college with dreams of going into interior design.
SOME LIKE IT COLD has a lot of good points to make about neurodivergence and autism, but good grief, it gets repetitive, as if it's beating us over the head with Jasper's diagnosis! It doles out symptoms like we're reading from WebMD, rather than learning about an actual human. Her sister Christine is horrible with no true redeemable qualities, making it difficult to root for the sisters to reconcile.
Jasper's love interest is Arthur, who has remained in Lake Pristine to run his late father's movie house. The two were childhood enemies, but with Jasper's return this childhood hatred turns into a spark. This is quite confusing, as it seems like they truly hated each other, and the story never makes clear how that hate actually manifests as unrequited love.
The story has some cute points, including its picaresque small town holiday setting and Jasper's friendship with Arthur's little sister, but it's bogged down by repetition and a lack of forward momentum. There's also far more telling than showing with the prose, making the book feel very long. Note that this is characterized as YA, but both Jasper and Arthur come across as older.
Overall, this has some fun Christmas aspects, but I couldn't quite get past all the flaws. 2.5 stars.
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