Fantasy&Education

Blog Tour: North Pole Reform School by Jaimie Admans

Title: North Pole Reform School
Author: Jaimie Admans
Date of Publication: November 6, 2013
Genre: YA rom-com, fantasy


Blurb:


Mistletoe Bell hates Christmas. So would you if you had a name like hers. Her Christmas-mad parents make the festive season last all year, and with another Christmas looming, Mis doesn’t think she can take any more. After her carelessness causes an accident at school, it seems like things can’t get any worse.


Then she wakes up to find The Ghost of Christmases Ruined in her bedroom.


She is taken to the North Pole, to a reform school run by elves determined to make her love Christmas. Stuck in a misfit group of fellow Christmas-haters with a motley crew of the weird and even weirder, watched over by elves day and night, she doesn’t expect to meet cute and funny Luke, who is hiding a vulnerable side beneath his sarcastic exterior. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with him.


But all is not as it should be at the North Pole. A certain Mr Claus is making the elves’ lives a misery, and pretty soon Mistletoe and Luke are doing more than just learning to like Christmas.


A YA romantic comedy in which Santa is the bad guy, teaching reindeer to fly is on the curriculum, and zombies have a fondness for Christmas music.
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Suitable for older teens and upwards due to bad language.




About Jaimie Admans


Jaimie is a 28-year-old English-sounding Welsh girl with an awkward-to-spell name. She lives in South Wales and enjoys writing, gardening, drinking tea and watching horror movies. She hates spiders and cheese & onion crisps. She has been writing for years but has never before plucked up the courage to tell people. Afterlife Academy is her third novel and she hopes you enjoy it. There are plenty more on the way!




North Pole Reform School



My emotions are quite mixed up about this story and that has had not happened to me from quite a long time, but I'll try to give you my honest opinion...


In the first place, I must admit that I really enjoyed this story but you must know this isn't a normal Christmas story - it's a different one and in a good way, for me at least- the idea is inspired after A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, but everything else is completely different, for example we have zombies, and a baby reindeer, and zombies that can dance, Oh, yes- you heard me... ZOMBIES. THAT. CAN. DANCE.


I haven't heard of something like this in like.... forever. Oh, and did I tell you about Santa Claus? Well...he's one of a kind. For example he can't accept a negative opinion about himself and thinks that he's a God gift to human kind, but more about him later.


The story begun with a purple moose that it's telling Mistletoe Bell ( yeah, she hates her name too) , our heroine and the story telling narrator that he is the Ghost of Christmases Ruined, but Misty (that's the name that she goes by) doesn't think nothing about it, because it's a figment of her imagination, right?


Well... it's not and she's going to North Pole because of something she did in school and affected a colleague of hers ( I'm not going to tell you what she did, you must read the story! ) and there the distraction really begins - let me describe a scene: a girl furious and not understanding where she is, a boy that is cute and hot in the same time, a man that admits himself without a remote regret that he's an alcoholic looser, a woman who's watched by ducks ( or at least that's what she thinks) and a dead boy ( again just him thinks that) and two elves...


Well things can't get worse more than that, can they? Until they do...


North Pole Reform is a story about forgiveness, selfness, goodness and everything that we want to hear, read or watch in these Christmas time. But more than that it's a. sweet and irresistibly entertaining story that teaches us about Christmas spirit and pushes us to ask ourselves a really, really important question : ' What's the meaning of Christmas for us?' . For me- it represents hugs, and staying warm in front of a fireplace with the loved ones, eating hot chocolate or candy, or simply reading a book- but that's just me and I'm happy like that...


North Pole Reform School teaches us a lesson about the power of words, sometimes we say or do things that otherwise we wouldn't do it in a million years, but even though that we do it, and we do it careless of the repercussions and how a one tiny could change the trajectory of life. It's a shame because in these times, what we really should do - it's celebrate it and be a good human being.


Mistletoe Bell, Lucas Wyatt, Hugo, Emily and Joe must learn these lessons and try to hate less the Christmas period or to hate it without ruining this time for other people. But, it's not an easy thing to do when Santa is a crazy, egoistical guy who is never wrong. What I liked is that even though Santa is who he is, there are good peop...errr, creatures like the elves Navidad and Tinsel, and Winter.


But... yep, it's a but... what I didn't like it was that teeny tiny bit about Santa and the reindeers, but it's not what you would think-personally I found the climax towards the end too fast and a bit too dramatic, but with such twist and thrill, it made the ending delightful but also confusing.


If you would like to read a YA humor contemporaries and haven't read anything by Jaimie, I urge you to check out this book- we have well defined characters and interesting plot, you'll love Mistletoe, Luke and their friends.


My rating: ****