So, This Is Christmas: Life in Native America

Just okay.

A charming book that’s aimed at the YA audience but I think anyone who has a soft spot for Christmas and romance will enjoy it. The “will they or won’t they get together?” tension between small town Oklahoma girl Finley and wealthy, reserved British classmate Arthur is central to the story. But Finley is dealing with much more — family secrets, parental issues, conflicts with old friends, and big questions about her future. All the other characters are nicely drawn and feel real and relatable. The writer does a nice job of capturing the emotional roller coaster ride Finley is on, but also adds lots of humor. Throw in a tourist town named “Christmas” as the setting, with all the rituals, pageantry and homey ambience, and you have a great, heart warming holiday read.

Lovely light Christmas read. Good book club pick but sadly the author clearly thinks the British are like characters from Downton Abbey, really rather un-researched. Why did no one point this out, or at least Google!

So, This is Christmas is a very cute contemporary read about Finley who wasn't expecting to go home for holidays and finds an unexpected guest there too.Finley's family runs a bed and breakfast in the small town of Christmas, Oklahoma. A rival, Arthur, of Finley's shows up at the inn as a guest and "demands" her to show him what an American Christmas is all about. The reason why he demands is because Finley did a bit of a makeover of the town website to make her life look a little more exciting to other classmates.My expectations of this book were a little low due to me thinking this would be just a fluffy Christmas read. Honestly that's what this book is: a fluffy cute Christmas read in a town called Christmas. The story has more depth though. Finley deals with the expectations of her family, the feeling of being a failure at her boarding school, first/second love, secondary romances, her parents possibly divorcing, and then the very weird adventure of showing British Arthur how Americans do Christmas.Overall not a bad read and I think 13-16 year olds will enjoy this book more. The book reminded me of a hallmark movie. Of course this book has a happy tidy ending and apparently has a sequel?!I'm definitely curious.3.5 stars

This was a super charming, sweet, often hilarious, and easy Christmas read that stayed with me for a long time after I put it down. The characters were interesting and cute and not limited to just the YA category, the adults get plots, too. But this story is really about Finley and her journey of trying to figure things out while noticing the boy she thought was annoying has a lot more going for him than she originally thought.