Pleasures of Christmas Past by Lexi Post

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With the craziness of getting things wrapped up for Christmas, I went a few days without reading. When I finally had a chance to read a little before bed, I wanted to pick up something shorter and that would work for one of the two prompts I had left for Banging Through the Snow. One of the ones left was Snow Monster! which is a wintery non-human main character. There was the usual wintery animal and reindeer shifter books you see a lot of this time of year, but then I remembered seeing Pleasures of Christmas Past by Lexi Post. This is the first book of her A Christmas Carol series. I was also able to use this for the got for free prompt for Winter's Kiss.

Jessica has graduated from training to be a ghost of Christmas Past and is assigned her first case. As a social worker when alive, she is very excited to continue her line of work as spirit. Since it's her first case, she's assigned a mentor to watch over and help right anything that goes wrong. The mentor assigned is Duncan, a sexy Scot from the 1800s. They are both attracted to each other, but try to focus on the job. To make things even higher stakes, their are tasked with helping Holly, their boss's widow.

I really struggled with rating this. I feel like I'm going be sneaky and go with 3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 (since I technically read this in 2021 and hadn't started my new rating system yet). There was a lot that intrigued me and kept me engaged. I found the spirit guide system really interesting and wanted to learn more about it. We focus here on the Christmas Past spirits and there's just a little discussion about the other two existing. I also wasn't quite sure what to think about the way the magic(?) works. Some of it was overexplained and other parts weren't.

I also didn't quite feel the tension between Jessica and Duncan. It was steamy and the words were there, but it just felt more physical I guess. I just don't think I completely believe that they are going to be together forever in the afterlife. To get a little more positive, I liked the discussion of grief and regret and just coming to terms with your life. I think a lot of it was smartly dealt with, but at the same time there was also a little too much. We had to deal with the issues of Duncan and Jessica on top of them trying to help Holly and in a way their boss Cameron as well. I also wasn't quite happy with how Cameron was okay with pretty much ruining Jessica's view on her own life. I feel like he could've handled it better and not at the same time of putting both Jessica and his wife's souls at stake.

There's a lot that kept me interested in the story overall and I might pick up more books in the series. It didn't quite meet everything that I was wanting/expecting, but I'm also intrigued to see how Lexi's writing might evolve as she gets further in. It's not at the top of my list, but I'm glad I tried it. It definitely fit my mood better than the other options I was looking at.

Have you read Pleasures of Christmas Past?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Pleasures of Christmas Past, Lexi Post, 4-stars, 2 days, eBook, 216 pages, published in 2015