intertwined with the joyous feeling Christmas brings and what it can bring for two complete strangers.
One of our main characters Lily is in despair over her favourite season,
Christmas. In order to cure her sadness her brother Langston makes her write some instructions and dares out in a red notebook and tells her to leave it in her favourite bookstore. Next up we have Dash who is in despair over his least favourite season, Christmas. In order to cheer himself up, he makes a visit to his favourite bookstore and in amongst countless novels he finds a red notebook. This red notebook sends Dash and Lily on a whirlwind romance throughout New York City. They spill their untold truths and greatest fears and throughout this journey they both start to wonder could their relationship be the same off-page?
This book gave me mixed emotions throughout all 300 pages! I loved Dash and Lily and they were by far my favourite characters because I feel as though they both had the most character development throughout the story. Dash went from being this miserable and lonely 18 year old to a happy and loving person; Lily went from being all sweet and innocent to a mature young lady.
I really enjoyed this development because I did actually find Dash very annoying at the start. For the first 150 pages his misery dragged the story on for what felt like forever and made the novel somewhat boring, apart from that I have nothing to complain about when it comes to these characters! During the first half of the book the whole idea of these 2 complete strangers writing to each other in a notebook seemed quite compelling however to me it was obvious what was going to happen, I just wanted them to meet in real life already! It’s not that this story was cliche I just knew what was going to happen by page 10 so for me the plot felt very stretched out. I think this stretching was done to make it so all of the secondary characters could have a chance and I did enjoy learning about them but sometimes I felt as if they weren’t integrated into the plot very well.
Although this novel had its ups and downs it is a fun read for anyone looking for a romantic Christmas tale!
Erin, Year 9
