Snow in April Book

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Caroline is due to marry within the next week to a man she's unsure she loves but takes a spontaneous trip to Scotland with her younger brother after hearing word that their estranged older brother was living there. After an unfortunate accident in a blizzard leaves the two stranded, they meet a man named Oliver living nearby who takes them in.

I've heard lovely things about Rosamunde Pilcher's books, most especially The Shell Seekers, but I made the decision to pick up Snow in April for one important reason: it satisfied the 'April, May or June in Title' square on my Bookish Bingo card. hahaha Okay, I'm sure that's a horrible reason but this was still a light, fluffy read that I enjoyed for the most part. Snow in April was written in 1972 so switching from a modern mindset is necessary as most of the goings on are fairly ridiculous.

It reminded me a lot of a soap opera with the constant dramatic shenanigans yet was lacking in the steamy goodness that you'd typically expect with a soap opera or a trashy romance novel. It had the feel of a guilty pleasure type novel just minus the whole point of those types of novels (don't lie to yourself, the steamy scenes are the only reason we read trashy romances). The romance is very simple and develops QUICKLY even though Caroline is engaged to be married. But her husband? Is her step-mothers brother. Plus Caroline is 20 and he's 33. Was that a thing in the 70′s or something because… no.

So Caroline travels to Scotland, gets stranded and is cared for by the (supposed to be-I didn't see it) swoony Oliver. At one point in her two day visit, she starts feeling sick and refuses to eat dinner, attributing her sickness to her impending nuptials and 'nerves'. Oliver proceeds to force feed her spoonfuls of soup as Caroline literally sobs during the whole thing. That was such a wtf moment because, you know, she only just met this man who just barged into her bedroom and tried to choke her with soup. It was just laughable, not swoony. There's also of course the requisite girl that's interested in Oliver and she begins fearing that Caroline is getting in the way of her happily ever after (because she can totally tell he likes Caroline a lot… after 2 days) so she sets out to run her out of town.

Snow in April is no literary masterpiece but it's 245 pages (with extremely large font to boot) that managed to entertain me on a quiet Saturday night. There might not have been any swoony goodness but there is a happily ever after and those are enjoyable to read every once in a great while.