Weight Till Christmas

by Ruth Saberton

[Leah]

When I received my ecopy of Weight Till Christmas by Ruth Saberton, I was so pleased! Ruth’s such a talented writer and Katy Carter Wants A Hero is easily one of my favourite Chick Lit novels, ever. I was so excited to dive into her Christmas novella, being the first bit of writing from her under her Ruth Saberton name in a couple of years. But, I have to admit to being a little disappointed in Weight Till Christmas.

First, I have to get this out of the way: For the first 25% of the novel I spent it in confusion. You see, Ruth wrote a novel called Ellie Andrews Is Getting Married, so when I started Weight Till Christmas and saw the heroine was called Ellie I presumed it was a sequel, but no. It’s just another Saberton heroine called Ellie and let me tell you, it confused the life out of me. Authors shouldn’t do that, you can’t write two books and have the heroines have the same name, it just doesn’t work. Ruth said she used the name because it’s the name of her niece (which is lovely, don’t get me wrong!!), but it doesn’t work; I expected a sequel and I spent a lot of the novel confused and wondering why Ellie worked at a car dealership and had been dumped by a Luke because I was SURE there wasn’t a Luke in Ellie Andrews Is Getting Married!

Basically, that just threw me off balance. From there, I couldn’t reconcile in my head that Ellie Andrews and Ellie Summers were two entirely different people. It was just lodged in my head they were one and the same. Weight Till Christmas isn’t a bad book at all, it’s basically Chick Lit by numbers – a fat heroine, a smarmy love interest who turns out to be smarmy, a best friend who just happens to be an unhappy fella etc. It ticked all the boxes, but I will admit that I do want more from my Chick Lit now, more than ticking all the boxes, and while Weight Till Christmas wasn’t bad, it also didn’t blow me away. It’s actually a shame; I’m sure there’ll be loads of people who love this novella, but I think Ruth has written better books, particularly Katy Carter, which was awesome. A good little Christmas novella, don’t get me wrong, but it left me off-balanced due to the inconvenience of having a heroine called Ellie!