I was really confused at times with the time jumps and different character POVs, but I think it was just a "me" thing. I would recommend this to others looking for a sweet, friendship filled holiday book! I will likely try this book again at a later date. Overall, cute read and perfect for the holiday!

If you watched Friends like I did, then you expected to live in New York with a group of friends and have amazing adventures.

Enter The Christmas Orphans Club by @beccamfreeman. I finished this book in 24 hours which is always a sign of a winning story for me. Add this one to your holiday reading.

I loved Hannah and the way she wanted to hold on and never let go of those she loved. I also couldn’t stop rooting for Finn to just get the guy!

This is a book for all those who have had to balance significant others, friendships and everything else in life.

Would recommend for fans of…
🎄 Emily Henry (specifically PWMOV and Happy Place)
🎄 Elf
🎄 NYC
🎄 Chain restaurants (specifically, Olive Garden)
🎄 Broadway

I’m not a huge holiday book person, but each year I try to read a few that stand out. The Christmas Orphans Club was the first on that list and has set a high, high bar for the rest of the titles on this year’s list.

In short, this might be the best holiday book I’ve ever read??? It is supremely heartfelt and emotional without ever venturing into cheesy territory. I was really hooked by the premise of an untraditional holiday tradition with a group of friends that are more like family and found myself trying to read slower so I could savor the story.

The flashbacks to previous Christmas celebrations were perfectly incorporated and gave context to the present day at exactly the right time for maximum emotional impact (kind of like the vacation chapters in PWMOV), and fun references to past adventures, NYC restaurants and landmarks, like the Times Square Olive Garden, provided the perfect amount of levity. One scene involving homemade jean jackets had me actually laughing out loud.

The Christmas Orphans Club is destined to become a holiday classic, so add this to your reading list now! You won’t regret it!

Thanks to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A delight! The story of four friends who are really family, who celebrate Christmas together each year — until maybe life sends them in different directions that won’t allow traditions to continue as they have. I love that this story contained romance but was really about friendship. I’m so interested in books that look at friendships and place the same value on them as romantic relationships. Also — this is a great Christmas book, but could be read anytime! Not too over the top themed or trope-y.

This was such a great friend group / found family book! I loved the ins and outs of Hannah & Finn's relationship, and that they each got their HEAs. The New York setting was fantastic, and I loved all the different Christmases. It's one of those that is a Christmas book at Christmastime, but when it isn't Christmas, it doesn't have to feel like a Christmas book, which I really love.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group/Books for the ARC!

“A riotous holiday rom-com about four friends in NYC who hold onto their unconventional Christmas tradition even when their paths diverge—but the changes they fear might be exactly what they need…”

I’m a biased reader because I listen to BOP and love Becca, but this book was so great! Love the friend-mance vs. romance angle and the importance of friendship. Loved this so much.

This book was a great holiday read without being too Christmas focused. I loved the found family aspect, all the different characters, and the flashbacks in time. I can’t wait to read Becca’s next novel.

The Christmas Orphan’s Club is a heartfelt novel about the fear of change. Hannah has valued her Christmas traditions with Finn—and by extension Priya and Theo—above all else, and now facing the prospect of her found family changing, everything else seems to crumble alongside it. Finn, has been desperately in love with his will-they-won’t-they best friend Theo, finally has the chance to tell him, even if it means changing their beautiful friendship for the worse. Changing tried and true traditions and relationships can be extremely overwhelming, emotionally exhausting, and downright terrifying—and Freeman handles it with such grace and honesty. The back and forth timeline lends itself well to the storytelling of where relationships diverged and reconnected, and how each character ended up at the ‘final christmas’. Overall, a touching story about a wonderful group of friends.

Thank you to Penguin Books and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced review copy of this title.

Such a great, feel good holiday read. I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I loved the story and characters and it got me in the holiday spirit

This was a cute feel good holiday book. I enjoyed reading it and wanted to keep picking it up. I thought the characters had great depth. It was a little tricky to remember what had happened in previous Christmases but I also enjoyed the multiple POV. It had a little more swearing that I like but overall I would recommend!

I adore a found family story, which is why this Christmas book for 2023 made my best of list! On her first Christmas after the death of her parents, Hannah meets Finn, another orphan and together they decided to celebrate Christmas together.

It sparks a lifelong friendship, folding in two other friends into their annual holiday gatherings. But a dozen years into their tradition, life is about to change. Hannah is engaged, Finn is about to move across the country, and they have some quarrels they need to fix.

Will this be their best Christmas yet or the end of their friendship? I loved the deep look at friendship in this story. So often Christmas books revolve around romantic love and not platonic love – which is just as important!

If you are looking for a new Christmas book for 2023, grab this one immediately! #gifted

I truly enjoyed this book. Very lighthearted yet inclusive and modern. I liked the characters very much and the story was just really unique and fun.

I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

As an avid listener of the Bad on Paper podcast for years, I absolutely could not wait to get my hands on Becca’s debut novel. This heartwarming story of chosen family did NOT disappoint! I laughed, I cried, and I called one of the members of my own chosen family immediately after finishing the epilogue. I cannot wait to get my hands on a physical copy for my bookshelf come September. I could not recommend this book more!

The Christmas Orphans Club was such a cute read! I love that the love story was between platonic friends, and the city itself. As someone whose friends have become their family, the story resonated.

I'll start by saying I'm a long-term fan of the Bad On Paper podcast, which I suspect is the only reason this book has been published since Becca Freeman, the author, has a cool 50k followers across her personal and podcast Insta (not counting various other social media metrics). I was excited for it - I do love Christmas, and I think the idea of friends who come together every year despite their backgrounds is wonderful. Unfortunately it's also a book that tries to be everything, but pulls up short. The multiple perspectives and non-chronological order of the plot means that each character essentially loses their voice; it's hard to connect with any of them. The book was also crammed full of over-used pop culture references to try and bolster the characters' personalities, but all it did was make them seem more one-dimensional. I found Hannah's desperation to hold on to the Christmas Club while simultaneously being rude to newer members off-putting, especially as there was no real resolution around this. All in all, it felt like despite hearing about this book for so long on the podcast and all the work Freeman put in (to the point the podcast became saturated with Freeman's book content) it really needed more editorial work done to it and a publisher cash grab to dump a book in their list to capitalise on the latest trend of influencers writing books (especially within romance). I did enjoy that this book can be read as a romance since Hannah's story is the main thread, but by the end I wondered whether or not this was deliberately exacerbated by the agent/publisher in edits to try and pigeonhole it into the romance-sphere as it began to feel forced. Am I holding Freeman up to higher standards than I would most debut authors? Probably, but when you make your entire schtick about writing and essentially judging other people's books, I don't think it means you get a free pass.

This book was beautiful. I loved the two POV's that told the story. I loved the friendships, family relationships, and the message of change. I think this is a perfect Christmas book and I will recommend it to all of my friends.

Hannah lost her parents at a young age and it isn’t until one Christmas that she discovers her found family.

I don’t always love a book that goes back and forth in time, but this one worked well. It gave me a better understanding of the characters and the relationships. I didn’t know what to expect with this one, but I really enjoyed it. I just wanted more of Finn as the story progressed!

One of my favorite tropes was the key theme of this book- found family! I love stories where people can come together and create their own families and have a chosen family. This story delivers!

The book mainly focuses on a group of 4 friends: Hannah, Finn, Theo and Priya. It describes how this group of friends came together and describes their Christmases over the past decade. Finn and Hannah meet when they are in college, and they immediately become best friends. Hannah meets Priya soon after, and Finn brings Theo into the group.

Each group member has their own reasons for being alone at Christmas, and the group finds their own way to make the holiday season special. It shows the beauty of friendship, found family, and growing up.

I loved the multiple timelines where we could learn about the characters over the year. The point of view is from Finn and Hannah's perspective told over the years of their friendship. We see Hannah struggle with the fact that her best friend is moving across the country and her boyfriend wants her to commit. Finn struggles with telling Theo about his feelings for him, and he is afraid to tell him for fear that it will ruin their friendship.

The book is labeled as a romance, but I think that it focuses more on friendship. The romance aspect comes as a side element of the story, but I did enjoy that too.

This is a great book to read around the holidays. If you love found family, friendship, Christmas, and New York settings, this is the book for you!

Thanks to the publisher, Viking Penguin Group, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

This book is told from multiple points of view and dual timelines. It reminded me of Emily Henry’s latest book as the conflicts in the present day storyline are explained by the historical storyline.

I enjoyed the friend group and how their friendship changed over time - as jobs shifted or new love interests arrived. They had each other’s back no matter what was needed.

NYC was not just the location but its own character. You could picture the characters as they did the holiday activities throughout the city.

Themes of found family, finding your path and friendships are present.

Overall a fun and festive read for the holiday season.

🎄THE CHRISTMAS ORPHANS CLUB by Becca Freeman🎄

📆PUB DATE: 9/26/23 (tomorrow!)
➡️Swipe for synopsis
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Format: Audiobook
Read if you like:
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Found family
⏱️Multiple timelines
2️⃣Dual Point of View

I’ve been a fan of Becca’s since I started listening to her podcast, Bad on Paper, in 2019, so when I saw she was coming out with a book it was an immediate auto-buy! I listened to the audiobook via @prhaudio and the narrators were perfect. The two POV’s we get are from Finn and Hannah, two best friends who spend every Christmas together after they both stayed back on campus over the holidays one year. Over the years, the tradition adds two more people, Theo and Priya. For the current Christmas, there are some major life changes for the group which could end the tradition for good.

I loved the found family aspect of this book so much, and it was a refreshing take on classic holiday book tropes. The characters have different reasons for not spending time with their traditional family on Christmas, and I haven’t seen that represented much in holiday books. This book was hilarious and heartwarming with the perfect amount of Christmas that I think this could easily be read all year. The multiple timelines (there are flashbacks to multiple of the group’s Christmases) were executed seamlessly as well. I am honestly DYING to see this as a movie!

This was such an incredibly fun read that I strongly recommend you add to your Holliday reading list!