Title: Claustrophobic
Author: Bernadette Franklin
Series: Holiday Fun #1
Rating Out of 5: 5 (I will read this again and again and again)
My Bookshelves: Christmas, Contemporary, Contemporary romance
Pace: Medium
Format: eBook, Novel
Year: 2018

As with all of the characters written by Franklin (Blain, Copperfield, etc.), Chloe and Julian are incredibly off kilter. In the best way possible. I love that they don’t toe the line of conventionality. And, instead of eventually echoing some kind of type of conventional behaviour, they just embrace each other’s weirdness. In reality I might not necessarily love some of their actions, but reading about them… yeah, I completely fell in love with this couple. As always.

Although this is a bit of the Grinch / sunshine stereotype, I do love that Chloe is very quickly bought around to the whole idea of Christmas. Normally it would take a little bit more, but instead of all of the angst that’s associated with deciding to love Christmas again, we get to focus on the high jinx and nonsense instead. I mean, sometimes I love angst and emotional development. But sometimes I just want shenanigans, and with Franklin, I got seriously fun and adorable shenanigans. Ones that I will revisit in the future.

The Carters introduction (for me) in The Runaround were freaking fantastic. And absolutely hilarious. It took me a little longer than I wanted to realise that Julie Carter was Julian’s mum. But once I did, man was I entertained. The Carters didn’t quite get as much attention as I would have loved during The Runaround, so I loved getting to know them a whole lot more in Claustrophobic. I also love that they are the common thread through this Holiday Fun series…

Another aspect of the characters that Franklin is constantly enthralling me with is the fact that they kind of spend a lot of time plotting. I loved that throughout this, Julian has actually been plotting and scheming for quite a long time. Yet, when Chloe figures this out, she manages to completely out scheme him. The fact that it involves a kidnapping just made me all that much more entertained. Definitely a book that I’ll be rereading again in the future (probably next Christmas).

<- More Bernadette Franklin

Shammed ->

Image source: Kobo