🎧 ARC Review: The Christmas Clash by Suzanne Park

Genre ~ young adult

Featuring ~ high school ~ 16yo, rival families, enemies to likers (since they’re kids), photography, Christmastime, racism

Release date ~ October 4, 2022

POV ~ dual ~ 1st person

Page count ~ 287

Audio length ~ 8 hours 17 minutes

My rating ~ 3.5⭐

My review:

Chloe and Peter’s families each have a restaurant in the local mall food court. Korean vs Chinese. They have been rivals for years, which means they never really got along. But when the mall is placed up for sale, Chloe and Peter work together to try save their parents livelihood and business.

I liked that they put their differences aside to work together. As they spend more and more time together they slowly begin to realize that maybe the other isn’t as bad as their parents have made them out to be all this time. It was light and cute. I liked how they swapped meals and now I want some shrimp lo-mein. I probably haven’t been to a mall food court in 10 years, maybe 15, so that was a fun little nostalgic element.
There wasn’t a whole lot of Christmas going on, except for Chloe working with Santa, so don’t go into this one thinking it’ll be all ornaments, reindeer and snowball fights on Sunday’s.

Narrated by Jay Lai and Jennifer Sun Bell for 8 hours and 18 minutes, easy to follow at 2x. Their voices sounded age appropriate.

*Thanks to Dreamscape Media, the author and NetGalley for the advance audiobook. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*

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Book blurb:

Who’s naughty and nice at Riverwood Mall? In this hilarious holiday rom-com, two rivals get together to save their families’ livelihoods, and Christmas, too!

Chloe Kwon can’t stand Peter Li. It’s always been that way. Their families don’t get along either: their parents operate rival restaurants in the Riverwood Mall food court―Korean food for the Kwons and Chinese food for the Lis. Now it’s the holiday season and Chloe’s the photographer at the mall’s Santa Land, and Peter works at the virtual reality North Pole experience right across the atrium. It’s all Chloe can do to avoid Peter’s smug, incredibly photogenic face.

But it turns out the mall is about to be sold to a developer and demolished for condos. Eviction notices are being handed out right before Christmas. Their parents don’t know what to do, and soon Chloe and Peter realize that the two of them need to join efforts to try to save the mall. Just when it seems like they can put aside their differences and work closely (very closely) together, they discover that the Kwon and Li feud goes far deeper than either of them realize… 

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