ARC Review: You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky

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You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince by Timothy Janovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Expected publication: October 4 2022

This was a cute and a little emotional cheesy Christmas romance.

Matthew was a shallow and pretty mean guy in the beginning, but every time he starting grating on me he’d drop some intensely sad backstory snippet that had me 100% on his team. The saddest boi! This really made it work for me - it explained why he was a defensive jerk in the beginning, literally a defense mechanism. But he works through it! Look at this!!

Hating Christmas is the one way I get to manage my familial expectations. I don’t get my hopes up over silly traditions or false illusions of togetherness. It’s safer than admitting that as a child I used to bleed red tinsel for this entire month.

he’s only grinch because his parents suck! so sad!! i’m glad christmas was returned to him because i too love christmas

He also had a well done redemption arc I felt like. It was gradual throughout the book, and he had to come to terms with all his personal and family baggage in order to complete it, which I really appreciated. Especially him telling his parents how much they fucked up. Hell yeah.

This had some very awkward writing things going on that did pull me out of the story, such as:

• unnatural conversations - they were very expositional and people don’t speak in paragraphs

• very odd word uses - sometimes it was just flat out incorrect word use, sometimes it was …made up words?

• too many dramatique metaphors and analogies - these can bring color, but you have to be restrained with them…it was not restrained here

• the dramatique metaphors also made the sex scenes (such as they were) gauzy and vague and really kind of distant…i don’t need it to be super explicit or anything, but this just felt like it should have been fade to black for the awkwardness it ended up with

Overall, it was cute holiday fluff. Some romcom moments like a mini baking contest, cute side characters, good personal arcs…it’s got it all.

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. All the opinions are my own.


You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince on Amazon

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