The Douglas Fir

This premise sounded cute, and I noticed that all of the reviews mentioned a plot twist, so I was curious enough to try this author for the first time. But although it was easy to read and the plot moved along quickly, I couldn't really connect with this book.

I was kind of hoping that the plot twist would be that the dog could talk, but no.

I feel like I just got M. Night Shyamalan'd by a contemporary gay romance. And not even a good Shyamalan'ing, no. This was no Sixth Sense. It wasn't even The Happening. No, this was an Avatar: the Last Airbender, come to take everything I love about saccharine holiday romances and butcher it mercilessly to leave me staring in slack-jawed awe at just how terribly executed one movie story can be.

And just like The Movie Which Shall Not Be Named Again - I hear if you say it three times at night, the Fire Nation attacks with subpar CGI and your childhood memories are reduced to ashes - I feel as if this book had a plethora of potential in concept which was, unfortunately, completely wasted.

The twist at the end isn't even bad. No, the problem is that the scattering of hints toward that outcome are so fleeting and the chemistry between characters so non-existent (massive chunks of important interaction happen off page in ‘months passed' time skips, in fact) that it just feels completely farcial.

I'll say a litlte more, but I'm not sure any of it matters, really. At the end of the story, the titular gift - which is cute on the surface but actually super creepy if you overthink how it's handled - gets cheapened by nonsensical eleventh hour developments.

The characters readers are supposed to root for aren't even that great, either. Jase in particular skates the edge of being absolutely pathetic instead of adorably smitten and Noah is unbelievable levels of clueless in more ways than one. Dave is supposed to be this amazing, fun, kind guy, but he has the personality of one of those little cartons of mac & cheese you pour water into and shove in the microwave: bland, unimpressive, and finishes with a weird texture that doesn't even resemble what the container promises. Jase's boss whose name I can't even remember was basically just ‘dirty old man with a good heart' - yawn. Really, the only character I even liked was Scott, Jase's younger brother who was quite believably written for a kid.

Oh, and the smut is really awkwardly written. I skimmed it instead of reading every word because writing has to be absolutely amazing to disable the cringe reaction I have to first person POV smut, and even without seeing the entire scene I still managed to run into two or three instances of incredibly ridiculous wording.

The normal writing was... okay, I guess? It felt pretty average to me: readable with a decent flow, but still lacking the je ne sais quoi that makes me stop and go “wow this is very well written.”

And that's pretty much all I have to say about this one. I went into it expecting a silly, cute holiday romance and came out of it feeling like I'd missed a good five chapters or so worth of development which should've come before the ending.