A review by claragweny
A Holly Jolly Ever After by Sierra Simone, Julie Murphy

emotional hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I wish there would have been some trigger warnings for this book. For me they would have included: religious trauma, purity culture, disability shaming, and pregnancy. 

I have two really big gripes with this book. Number one being Winnie’s narcolepsy. She never tells anyone, not even Kallum, about her narcolepsy. At a certain point, it just doesn’t really matter and almost completely forgotten about. As a disabled person, I find this really untruthful and not believable at all. No one experiences disability, especially as shame-ridden as Winnie did, and then deserves to get it left out of their story. Part of her happily ever after should have included her loudly proclaiming her narcolepsy as something not be shameful about, just like she did with sex and intimacy. 

My second issue is the surprise pregnancy. Some people are down with this trope and even I like it sometimes (I loved the book Ready or Not by Cara Bastogne). But it feels wrong in this story. Winnie is healing from religious trauma, a lifetime of shame around sex, and her divorce from a bad husband. Why, oh, why does HER story have to end with a surprise pregnancy? It’s an easy plot maneuver and creates a lot of easy to write drama. Why spend so much time giving us all this backstory for a character just for her to end up pregnant? Because that is a way to heal all wounds for women? I don’t know but it doesn’t fit with this story or with these characters and I hated it. 

Fix those two parts and you’d have a good book.

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