About the Book:
A teen reclaims her independence and opens her heart to Christmas with the help of a handsome ski instructor in this swoon-worthy young adult holiday romance told in a groundbreaking advent calendar format, with chapter-a-day reading making it a true slow-burn!
When eighteen-year-old April heads to the foothills of Mont Blanc in the Alps to spend her first Christmas at her father’s chalet, she’s hoping for a change. Ever since her heart operation two years ago, she’s lived as carefully as possible. Supervised exercise, green tea, rice cakes, focusing only on her studies. But now, she’s healthy and there’s a world out there that she’s missing.
When April’s ski instructor turns out to be her best friend’s older brother, Augustin, it feels like a sign. As Augustin encourages April to build up her strength, April feels drawn to him in ways she wasn’t expecting. Augustin is daring and gorgeous, and April doesn’t want to let her life pass her by any longer. But is her just-healed heart ready for a Christmas miracle?
With this book’s unique advent calendar format, each of the twenty-four chapters is sealed by its own perforated enclosure that readers can gently tear open—by hand or with the help of a ruler—to read a chapter a day in the weeks leading to Christmas!
*Review Contributed by Connie Reid, Site Manager and Staff Reviewer*
A Heart For Christmas is a YA romance in a unique Advent calendar format where you open a chapter each day for 24 days leading up to Christmas. I was most attracted to this book due to its format. I am a notorious binge reader and was unsure whether I could stand to read only one chapter a day. Upon learning about such a book, I wondered how it would be available in a physical book format with an advent-style approach. Therefore, this book was a fun experiment and a unique reading experience that I was eager to try.
The book is divided into 24 chapters that are held together by perforated segments. Sensorially, it was fun to rip open the sections. The book does recommend using a letter opener or ruler to open the chapters cleanly, and they are right; I did rip a few pages unevenly because I don’t listen to directions.
Regarding the binge reading aspect, the author does a nice job of keeping the chapters stable with few cliff hangers to tempt you to peek (although come on, Day 23 just left one chapter before I could mark it finished on my TBR, and I did break open early and finish). There is also a lot of repetition of the main plot points, so spreading it out over nearly a month does not make it hard to remember what is happening. The holiday season can be spectacularly busy, and a hard time to find reading time, which makes this book well-suited to read in December, because after a few pages, you are done with the chapter and are not supposed to read more.
This plot works well with the advent style format, and the format is the main draw for why you would read this book. If this were just a YA romance book as normal, I would be giving it a different rating because I would be looking at the richness of the plot harder. Under that criterion, this plot would be a bit thin, repetitive, and the few times there were cliff hangers, the next chapter started anew without giving you a play-by-play of the drama that made it a cliff hanger.
Overall, the book is designed to be a cozy romance read. A delightful bit of fluff to pick up for a chapter a day while you drink hot chocolate and get in the spirit of the season. It nails its purpose. I can’t remember a time when I have craved hot chocolate so much.
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