Review : Secret Santa
Secret Santa by Sabrina James
Pages : 345
Genre : YA, Holidays
My Rating : 
What it’s about :
The week before school ends for the winter break, the school organizes a huge gift-giving activity : every student will pick a name and become that student’s secret Santa for the week! The identity of all secret Santas will be revealed on Friday night, at the Christmas dance.
Froggy, who is completely in love with the beautiful new girl Celia, sees this as the perfect opportunity to romance her. Celia, on her side, has a huge crush on the name she picked, Jake, who’s also Froggy’s coworker. She’s thinking of using the game to her advantage, although to do so requires disobeying queen bee Amber’s orders. Romantic Noelle is seeing this as the occasion to finally declare her love to Charlie, her oh-so-hot neighbor, while her best friend Lily discovers that being one of Santa’s elves isn’t as easy as she thought it would be.
What was supposed to be a simple game soon turns out into a chaotic week!
Did you feel lost only reading this quick summary? If you did, than you should probably stay away from this book. By using quick chapters that alternate from view too view faster than you can cry “Santa!”, James created a whirlwind of a story! While I do enjoy novels that alternate point of views, this was a little too much : there was a load of characters, and as a consequence, we didn’t get to really know any of them. The author helped by making them kind of clichés, so you rapidly know their place in the school’s food-chain, but there’s nothing personal about it.
This being said, it wasn’t all bad. The idea was fun, and I liked most of the characters. James writing is perfect for the genre, too, and I liked it. It was a good way to put some Christmas spirit into my reading! As it turns out, the game doesn’t really put all of the characters into the Christmas spirit; on the contrary, many of them get jealous or envious, but there’s also a lot of romances and new friendships being created. That was sweet, too.
In the end, while Secret Santa wasn’t an outstanding read, it was still a good and quick read to enjoy just before Christmas!
Nice review 😉
I picked this up for my Christmas Reading Challenge. I thought the idea of the Secret Santa was great when I started, but I was so confused during it, it took away the luster. I can only imagine the drama if that happened when I was in school!