Christmas magic, but make it messy

⭐⭐⭐ 

I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about Pining for You by Stef Ferrari. Bennie is a high school senior who works at...some sort of Christmas tree-type emporium in Connecticut. She encounters Eve, who lives in Brooklyn, and she and her friends decide to go into the city to try to find her so Bennie can capitalize on Christmas magic and have her first kiss.

That description makes it sound a lot lighter than it is. Bennie and her friends are pretty much all dealing with fairly weighty issues--as is Eve. It's pretty much all family issues, but Bennie and her friends are also facing down the end of high school and all of the change that comes with that. It's a hard, transitional time of life, to be sure. But that's all heavier than the Hallmark Christmas movie description makes it out to be.

The story itself is pretty cute, and I enjoyed Bennie's group of friends and how much they were there for each other. (I didn't need as much explicit "We're a found family, yay!" exposition as there was, but this is YA, so I should probably give it a pass.) Bennie herself could be a bit annoying at times, though in a way that was fairly realistic for a teenager from Connecticut. She wants to go to film school and so keeps recording on a Camcorder as the group traipses about New York, but doesn't realize that not everyone wants to be recorded and is hurt when she's told so. I could also very much relate to her frustration at not being able to participate in a number of her normal Christmas traditions--because this is a Hallmark-esque story (Bennie's goal is to make queer Christmas rom-coms), Bennie is all about the magic of Christmas, and throughout the book has to confront that not everything is magical, that Christmas can be hard for people. She also finds Christmas magic in unexpected places and moments, so it does even out.

Also, Bennie and Eve's relationship is great (though the third act crisis seemed...off). As someone who also had my first kiss later than many others (though my friends were never this invested in making sure I got it), I could relate to Bennie's feelings about it.

Unfortunately, I wasn't particularly enamored of Ferrari's writing; I'm not sure whether it was trying to sound Zoomer or what, but it was a bit cringe-inducing to me, a Xennial. At times, it was a bit of a slog, oddly enough, and there were chunks I wound up skipping--particularly at the end, where there was a multi-page speech spelling out the lessons of the book. Good for Bennie for learning them, and I guess theoretically young people reading the book might need them spelled out, but it felt a bit like it was underestimating the audience.

Still, would 100% watch the tv movie adaptation. And as such, I'll include my Hallmark movie checklists.

Trope(s):
    Royalty
    Alternate reality
    Small town ✔
    Fake relationship
    Family business getting sold/going bankrupt 
    Enemies-to-lovers
    Best friends-to-lovers
    Second chance
    Stranded ✔

Meet Cute: 
Eve and her Christmas Carol-obsessed younger brother show up at the Christmas place in Connecticut where Bennie works. Bennie's trying to get a tree to surprise her mother with, but is entranced enough to spend some time getting to know Eve. But she gets called off before getting Eve's contact info; she's just left with a few snippets of information and some cookies from Eve's family's bakery.

Rundown:
    Dead parents ✔
    Montage(s)
    Christmas-related name(s) ✔
    Animals
    Returns to hometown
    Is Santa a character? 
        Secretly or overtly?
    Cookie baking 
    Tree decorating ✔
    Somebody hates Christmas
    Christmas festival in a small town 
    A literal competition 
    Child plays matchmaker
    All work, no romance/life 
    Kiss before the end of the movie ✔
    Interrupted kiss ✔
    Flashback to childhood
    The leads literally run into each other
    Gratuitous shirtless scene
    Big Secret
    Wacky misunderstanding
    Just. Talk. To. Each. Other. ✔
    Someone pushing the leads together ✔
    Real family = chaos / bad families = cold and not chaotic
    Learns the meaning of Christmas
    Stranded by snowstorm ✔
    Hot chocolate ✔
    Ice skating 
    D-list celebrity
    Enemy-to-friend storyline
    The love interest is an ex
    Career change
    Lying to each other
    Tries to apologize, but keeps getting cut off
    Christmas pageant 
    End with a flash-forward

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.