Review: Secret Santa by Sabrina James

Rating (Out of 5): 3 

Publisher: Point

Goodreads Synopsis:

A tale of love, romance, confusion, and Christmas perfectly timed for the holiday season.

Noelle, a hopeless romantic, just knows that her gifts have to be from her senior crush! And geeky Froggy thinks the game is the perfect way to get super-popular Celia to fall for him...except she thinks his gifts are from Jake, the school's resident bad boy, and starts to crush on him! Romantic mishaps abound, but all is revealed the night of the Winter Dance, where there's more than one surprise waiting under the mistletoe!

Review: 

 

First of all, this is a girly Christmas story. It's a little immature, childish, and exaggerated. There are way too many exclamation points used, for instance. I read it several years ago, and I enjoyed it. It's full of fluff and not a whole lot of substance other than cute romance. I know this, but I still mostly enjoyed it.

It jumps around to several different points of view. And it's centered around a secret Santa thing their school is doing. (Do schools actually do this kind of thing? I feel like most people wouldn't have the money for it, which sucks, but it would be awesome.)

There's Noelle, who likes Charlie but is Ryan, his younger brother's, secret Santa. She's a very crappy Santa to Ryan, but things work out. There's Lily, Noelle's best friend, who's just recently been cheated on by her then-boyfriend, Jason, and has now decided to take a break from relationships. She gets Connor, and ends up getting what his best friend, Simon, likes. And there's Celia, who's just moved here and ended up hanging around with the popular girls, Amber and Shawna, but who is not very materialistic and doesn't know how to get closer to Noelle and Lily and away from Amber and Shawna. She gets Jake, who she's been crushing on, while Froggy, her nerdy lab partner who is crushing on her, gets her. Shawna gets Dennis because Amber decides they need older boyfriends, but she likes Connor, her actual boyfriend. Amber chooses Charlie, wanting to steal him from his girlfriend. (Does that sound complicated? It wasn't, in the book. Sorry, if it is.)

Those are the main characters, but there are also a few smaller roles thrown in. Like Mindy, the gossip. And David, Froggy's best friend, who goes for what he wants despite the rejections he receives.

Quite a bit happens, plot wise. As in, several of the characters have to do some growing to get what they want. And there are a lot of mess ups and complications with the presents and relationships.

Despite the over-exaggerated way of the book, it was still good. What I was expecting from a short, girly book, really. It was fun. I liked Celia and Froggy most; I liked her predicament with wanting to be away from the popular, mean girls and be friends with the nice girls, and Froggy was adorable. But I like the nerdy types, so I'm partial to him. Lily and Simon I liked second most, after them. I wasn't a big fan of Noelle and Charlie and Ryan, mostly because I didn't like what Noelle was doing. That was just stupid and not okay. Amber I did not, as I was supposed to. Most of the others were mostly just okay, I guess. But I did like the variety of characters that are shown.

I don't know why, but I like these kinds of books. I've read some of James' other books, and liked them about the same as I did this one. Despite the not great, over-exaggerated writing, I do enjoy them, quite a bit. They're just romantic, fluffy, and good.