Sarah Reviews… We Met In December by Rosie Curtis

Title: We Met In December

Author: Rosie Curtis

Publisher: Avon

Publication Date: 5^th September 2019

Format: eARC

This book was received from the publisher in return for an honest review

About the book:

What if you couldn’t get away from the one who got away?

This December, unlucky-in-love Jess is following her dream and moving to Notting Hill. On the first night in her new house-share she meets Alex, the guy in the room next door. They don’t kiss under the mistletoe, but there’s still a spark that leaves Jess imagining how they might spend the year together – never mind the house rule against dating…

But when Jess returns from her Christmas holiday, she finds Alex has started seeing Emma, who lives on the floor above them. Now Jess faces a year of bumping into the man of her dreams – and, apparently, the woman of his.

Jess is determined to move on and spend the year falling in love with London, not Alex – but what if her heart has other ideas?

What I Thought:

For Jess it’s time for a change, out with the cheating boyfriend, the safe career path and her hometown of Bournemouth and in with the new adventure. A new job in the publishing industry and a room in a shared house in Notting Hill, she’s off to the big city.

We Met In December tells the story of Alex and Jess over the course of a year following their first meeting one evening before Christmas when they move into the same shared house.

The story is told from two separate points of view, both Jess and Alex over the course of a year (plus an epilogue). I really enjoyed the structure of the story, seeing things from both Alex and Jess’s perspective as well as following them through the whole year. Both the point of view and time jumps are clearly identified throughout the book, with headings making it clear whose point of view we are reading at any given time, and also the date at which the action is taking place. The structure means the plot is well paced, I saw enough of their lives through the chapters to understand the journeys that they were both on, without reading a book thousands of pages long covering the minutiae of their lives throughout the whole year.

I really liked both central characters. I certainly identified with Jess making the move from Bournemouth up to the big city after I’d moved from my own little town in Devon up to Edinburgh. Although I have a much better relationship with my mother

than Jess seems to I also had a really special bond with my grandma so I loved seeing that reflected back within the book in the relationship between Jess and Nanna Beth. What I found especially refreshing about Jess’s story was that we saw her struggling slightly with the change, with leaving her grandma and moving into a new career. She didn’t just waltz into the office and know everything from the beginning, it gave what I felt was a realistic view of starting a new career and floundering slightly, going from a job where you knew exactly how everything worked to having to learn everything from scratch. I think it showed that while things aren’t always easy sticking it out can be worthwhile.

Then we get to Alex, dear Alex who gave up a well-paying career in law to retrain as a nurse following his father’s passing. Good looking and noble… a bit of a cliché perhaps but then who doesn’t want that in a Richard Curtis type rom-com? Bring on the gorgeous moral men I say, I’m already casting the movie in my head….

I really enjoyed the rest of the supporting characters Becky, Rob and Emma, Jess and Alex’s other housemates to Sophie and Gen Jess’s friends from home and of course Nanna Beth! I could very happily read more about any of these characters.

Final Thoughts

This wasn’t quite the first super Christmasy book of the year I thought it might be but nevertheless I really enjoyed spending a year with Alex and Jess. The story wrapped up really satisfactorily but I can’t help but want to catch up with these characters again. I feel there are things I still need to know! And yes it was tough to write this wrap up without spoilers!

About The Author

Rosie grew up in the Scottish Highlands before moving to Melbourne, and now lives with her family in Southport, North West England. Writing as Rachael Lucas, she is the author of four women’s fiction novels, published by Pan Macmillan, as well as two YA novels, published by Macmillan Children’s Books.