Emilie's Book World: Blog Tour: Decked With Holly by Marni Bates + Giveaway

Author: Marni Bates

Publisher: Kensington Teen

Release Date: September 25, 2012

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository

Holly Dayton is about to go way out of her comfort zone…

Spending Christmas vacation on a cruise with her two cousins from hell isn't Holly's idea of a good time. And when in a moment of seasick-fuelled desperation she lurches into an open suite--she's greeted with an eyeful of pepper spray. The culprit? A gorgeous guy calling himself Nick. But when Holly goes to make her exit, she gets the shock of her life: a corridor crammed with screaming teenage fans. Because Nick just happens to be Dominic Wyatt, drummer for ReadySet--one of the hottest bands in America.

Suddenly rumors are swirling, and Holly's face is captured on countless phones and plastered all over the Internet. But the band can't risk a scandal destroying their family-friendly image, so Dominic convinces Holly to be his fake girlfriend--just for two week.s How bad could it be to be fauxmantically involved with one of the cutest rockstars on the planet? Holly's about to find out...

Decked With Holly by Marni Bates is one of those guilty pleasure kind of books. All I knew going in was that this book would make me laugh and believe me when I say that it did. It was a fantastically fun story that had me smiling for start to finish.

While most people would be excited at the prospect of a week long cruise in Mexico, Holly isn't particularly looking forward to it. Because for Holly this cruise means a week in a cabin with her two cousins who like nothing more than to make her life miserable. But things change when seasick Holly finds herself in Dominic's suite on the ship. Dominic was just hoping for some down time and to stay anonymous. But once Holly barges in to his life, everything doesn't go quite as planned. Holly now finds herself pretending to be rockstar Dominic's girlfriend because that's the only way to explain why she spent the night in his cabin. But somewhere along the way, what started out as a fake relationship started to feel less and less fake. But will Holly and Dominic realize it before everything falls apart?

Decked With Holly made me laugh. A lot. To the point that my brother was giving me weird looks while I was reading. But I just couldn't help it. The things that happen in Decked With Holly will at least make you smile if not laugh out loud. Because this story is so incredibly fun. It's not necessarily the most realistic of stories but that's what made me love it as much as I did. One of the reasons I also really loved this book is that it reminded me of Meg Cabot and everything I love about her books. Marni Bates does a fantastic job with the humor in Decked With Holly. There were rarely moments when I wasn't at least smiling. Holly's and Dominic's intertwined stories were really something and that fact alone was enough to keep me reading. Especially when it came down to whether they would realize to what I had been seeing between them all along.

Holly hasn't had it easy. Her parents died when she was still a baby and she was raised by her grandfather. But what makes her life truly miserable are her two cousins who make it their goal in life to torture Holly. And that made me root for Holly, because she finally deserved something good in her life. Granted what she got might not have been what she expected. But that didn't stop me from liking Dominic. Sure there were times when I wanted nothing more than to smack him (so did other characters in the book for that matter), but he was still a really great person. By the end of the book I may have even been a bit in love with him. But Dominic and Holly together were great, even if it was meant to be fake.

Decked With Holly was a fabulously fun read. Marni Bates really hit the mark with the humor in this book. If you want a good laugh, I strongly recommend picking up Decked With Holly, or any of Marni Bates' other books because they had me laughing too.