Review of ‘The Holiday Detour’ by Jane Kolven
I thought this was a slightly below average lesbian debut novel. I do like holiday books, and I’m getting more into contemporary romances, but this one had more of a fun, almost rom-com feel that doesn’t always work for me. I tell people my funny bone is broken so I don’t always click with humor reads. With this book, I had trouble realizing if parts were supposed to be funny or not. This didn’t have the comedy label but when a character is talking about falling on her face with her pants down, I assume this is trying to be funny. I feel like I’m rambling here, basically, this book just confused me and it was not the fit I was hoping for.
The main positives for me can be found in the diversity of this book. It was nice to see a Jewish main character and I was really excited to have a genderqueer main character too. While the book was a little zany and out there at times, most of the more serious moments had to do with issues that the genderqueer character Charlie had to face like bathroom shame, pronoun discrimination, and family acceptance.
One of my biggest issues with this book was the total and complete insta-love. This book mostly takes place over two days so everything relationship-wise was at warp speed. I get that the author had to do it this way for the premise of this book, but a character actually imagining marriage on the second day of knowing someone is just a no go for me. I know we lesbians love to UHaul but this may be the fastest amount of time to decide to move in together that I have ever read. Was this serious, or was this book supposed to be so zany than anything goes? If anything this book just got my anxiety going which I sure don’t want while reading.
I didn’t click with this style of writing but it doesn’t mean you won’t. I actually love first person but the problem here was being in a character’s head that was so scattered brained. Dana is one of those characters with almost no filters. She would just blurt things out that were either the opposite of what she thought or wanted (which was hard to follow) or she blurted out inappropriate things that made me cringe. She was a hard character to root for and I still don’t think I really like her. If the book would have been first person in Charlie’s head, it could have been a deeper and more moving story. And maybe then I would have understood how someone as sweet as Charlie would or could insta-love Dana.
This was just not a match for me. I can’t recommend this one but that doesn’t mean that you will not enjoy it. Because this book confused me, I’m not sure if other people might enjoy it more than I did. I would recommend that people read other reviews to help them decide if this book is for them or not. 2.75 Stars.
An ARC was given to me for an honest review.
The Holiday Detour
I thought this was a slightly below average lesbian debut novel. I do like holiday books, and I’m getting more into contemporary romances, but this one had more of a fun, almost rom-com feel that doesn’t always work for me. I tell people my funny bone is broken so I don’t always click with humor reads. With this book, I had trouble realizing if parts were supposed to be funny or not. This didn’t have the comedy label but when a character is talking about falling on her face with her pants down, I assume this is trying to be funny. I feel like I’m rambling here, basically, this book just confused me and it was not the fit I was hoping for.
URL: 3 stars, Christmas, Genderqueer, Humour
Author: Jane Kolven
2.75
