A Tiara Under the Tree by Carolyn Hector

 

Welcome Back Booklovers! With Christmas fast approaching I wanted to read a holiday romance specifically a Black romance. And this one just had such a pretty cover and sounded promising so I couldn't resist. 

Unfortunately this book was like a rollercoaster for me. It started off really patchy and it often felt like there were paragraphs missing. This story follows a beauty queen named Waverly who has just been dethroned from her local pageant after going off on a reporter. She has moved to a new town and is laying low right now. After a mix of with a pizza that was delivered to the wrong address she is convinced by a handsome business owner, Dominic, to enter the local pageant and get back on track to becoming Miss Georgia. 

And things just kind of rush along from there with most of the story being told off page. It was hard to get invested because despite their instant attraction to each other I don't feel they had enough time together on page. Dominic leaves town for three months which should've given way to a slow burn romance. Instead we don't really get to see how Waverly or Dominic cope during that time. Instead the story is fast forwarded to his return and they immediately jump into a full blown relationship.

And then Dominic just had this overbearing personality I couldn't stand. He really wasn't supportive of Waverly's pageant dreams. He lost his temper more than once and physically assaulted a man he saw as a threat. He was angry that Waverly would have to compete in a swimsuit competition because he didn't want other men ogling her.  I felt like much of his persona was written off as a being a bad boy but he was just a jerk. The bare bones were there but the plot never fully formed for me and there wasn't enough chemistry outside of the bedroom for me to overlook the random time jumps. I wanted a fleshed out story about a beauty queen with real conflict not just cheap glimpses from outside.