This was a heart-rending story. it maintains a steady, page turning pace that makes it hard to put down. . A perfect book for the Christmas season.
Many thanks to Random House and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Ever since an accident tore Holly and her family apart, she had sought out letters to help her heal. Each Christmas, Holly writes to a stranger expressing her loss and trying to get through it. One Christmas, she receives a Dear Stranger letter from an elderly pen pal that just tugs east her heart. Even though everyone is to remain a stranger, Holly feels that it’s her duty to help Emma through her tough time. She is drawn to her story, but also drawn to the place she lives. She had been there once and has a fire inside her again to find Emma. As things begin to open with Emma, Holly realizes she has met her long lost grandson. Determined now more than ever, Holly sets out to fix everything with Emma and maybe try to even repair her own life.

This was not your typical holiday romance plot. Sure, the book had ties to the holidays, but it had a much deeper plot. I appreciated the depth that the characters. This was raw and emotional as it digs into ones grieving process. It shows the power of fate. While this one at times can be warm and cozy, just don’t be surprised if you end up shedding a tear or two.

Thank you Net Galley, Emily Stone and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Dell for the advanced copy for my honest review. This one is out now, so snag it now and get it on that holiday reading list.

This is a touching and sweet contemporary romance about fate, tragedy and forgiveness. It revolves around the holiday season so is a good Christmas read but not as light and fluffy as the cover would have you think as it deals with some heavier issues.

This was an enjoyable book, I had a great time reading it!

Things I liked:
1. There weren’t very many characters so it was easier to focus on the main characters
2. Everything that happened was connected in some way, that helped tie all the characters and plot points together

Things I didn’t like:
1. The majority of the book didn't take place during Christmas, but the book was advertised as a Christmas book. It mostly spans one year (Dec-Dec), but the prologue is 3 years earlier and the epilogue is 1 year later
2. not necessarily a bad thing, but it was very sad and emotional, and I was hoping for something a little lighter

This was a good book, but I wouldn’t really categorize it as a Christmas book, and that’s what it is advertised as.

I simply loved this story. The main story line alone would be worth the read, but the secondary characters and their interactions give the story a richness that feels real and genuine. The dialogue was excellent, full of both wit and swoon-worthy lines. There is also sadness, and while Christmas plays a part, I wouldn't call this a holiday book, as the time span is longer than the holidays. I couldn't put this book down and knew halfway through that it would be new favorite for me. The story didn't always go the way I thought it would, but the angst and slow burn of the main characters' love story was worth it. I've read a lot of books this year and "Love, Holly" definitely caught my attention and held on the whole time. This is a keeper and one I know I will read again. Highly recommend!

4 stars!

Emily Stone is the kind of author who will punch you in the stomach with sadness only to lift you back up again with the holiday spirit, strong connections, and her incredible writing. I loved her book "One Last Gift," and "Love, Holly" is also wonderful. Stone takes big, tough issues like death, grief, estrangement, and terminal illness, and combines them with holiday cheer, second chances, fate, and grace to make one heck of an emotional book. I laughed and cried while reading this one. This is not your typical formulaic love story. It takes its time unfolding to the point where some readers may even call it "slowly paced." I, for one, was along for the ride as main character, Holly and Jack, find their way back to one another through a series of serendipitous circumstances. Stone weaves such a delicate tale of sorrow and reconnection that I found myself fully immersed in this book from start to finish. I think it might be Stone's best book yet. Don't go into this story expecting a light holiday affair; it gets pretty grim and troublesome, but rest assured, she steers the ship back around to happiness eventually. I also love how each of Stone's novels involve letter writing in some capacity. There are some miscommunications in this book that may rub readers the wrong way, but they weren't so annoying that they turned me off from the story as a whole. All in all, read this if you need a good cry this holiday season. I loved it!

Thank you to NetGalley, Emily Stone, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, and Dell for the complimentary ARC of this book. All opinions are my own. I was not compensated for this review.

I look forward to Emily Stone’s holiday release each year, and Love, Holly is another excellent book! Love, Holly is not the typical Christmas book, and the story takes place over a year. Holly has become estranged from her sister, and Jack is estranged from his grandmother. This book is a story of sadness, loneliness, and isolation, but it is also a story of friendship, second chances, and personal growth. I loved this book! Thank you, NetGalley and Random House for the advance reader copy of this book.

Loved this book!

Fate is a force unto itself, and it unleashes itself on people unexpectedly. Holly is still suffering with guilt over a car accident that left her pregnant sister without a child. She signs up for a Dear Stranger letter writing group, where people write letters, not knowing who will receive it, and are able to open up without fear of being found out. Except Holly did find out who wrote the letter she received, and the rest is, well...fate.

I loved the relationship between Holly and Emma. It was beautiful to be enmeshed in their realizations, Emma's occasional crabbiness, Holly's unsent letters to her sister, and finally Emma and Jack's story. I highly recommend this story to anyone who needs to feel good about life again.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book, but my opinions are my own.

This was a lovely read. It's well written, with excellent character development. There is romance, but it's not the main thing, which I liked. It's a Christmas story, but it's mostly about relationships.
I recommend it!

Emily Stone is the queen of emotional romances that kind of take place during Christmas but span a whole year of coincidences, connections and healing. This one might be my fave.

I could not put this book down!. I started it after midnight and I had to force myself to go to sleep once I hit 75% because I knew there was no other way I was getting any sleep that night.

I love books about connections between people and how we can enrich others’ lives by being in them. Like found family but with more coincidental ties and even more emotionally healing one another. Love, Holly does this so well!

A big focus for Love, Holly is grief. There are three main people who are experiencing different kinds of loss, and they go through it in very different ways. I really enjoyed seeing them heal and rebuild some bridges and also how unique their approaches were. How seeing someone else go through something similar can give you a whole new perspective on your own pain. And how sometimes it’s much easier to tend to other people than ourselves.

The romance is incredibly sweet as well. I felt like there was a bit more of it than her previous two books. Somehow Emily Stone keeps managing to make an instant connection and a year of coincidences feel not only absolutely believable, but also romantic and deep.

This book is still more about the individual characters and their journeys rather than the romance as a whole. I loved all three of the characters, the grumpy elderly lady especially. I loved seeing them change, grow, and accept that they do deserve love and happiness, that you can rely on others even if there is always the possibility of loss.

The only thing that bothered me was Holly’s family’s reaction to what happens at the beginning of the book. So much could have been avoided if any of them (but especially the parents) had approached it with a modicum of reason and communication skills.

Thank you so much to Random House Publishing Group, Ballantine Books, Dell Publishing and NetGalley for the eARC!

Overall rating: 4.2⭐

Many thanks to NetGalley, Random House Ballantine Dell Books for gifting me a digital ARC of the new book by a favorite, Emily Stone - 5 stars!

A car accident tore Holly's family apart and her sister no longer speaks to her. She has been a part of a holiday letter-writing club where she writes to a stranger spending Christmas alone and receives a letter from someone in turn, all anonymous. But this year, the letter Holly receives from Emma mentions a place that she knows. She realizes she can maybe help heal this person's heart. When she tracks down Emma's estranged grandson, Jack, she realizes it was someone she had met before. Holly is determined to fix Emma's family, and maybe her own.

Emily Stone writes the best kind of rom-coms - full of characters you will love and root for, a believable storyline that tugs at your heart, with plenty of life lessons thrown in along the way. I always really liked the letter writing part of the story - both the Christmas letters as well as those that Holly wrote to her sister. This book was about second chances, forgiveness, the family we choose, and a reminder about how important communication in all forms is to relationships. A must read at the holidays or anytime!

Another one of Emily Stone’s emotional holiday reads!! This book has lots of ups and downs as it spans the course of the year. It is riddled with friendship, tentative romance, misunderstandings, travel, and much more. Around the middle, I found it lagged and lost my attention a bit; but, overall, I really enjoyed it.

4⭐️

My favorite Emily Stone book so far!

4/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Holly is in a car crash on Christmas Eve that leaves her relationship with her sister incredibly fractured. She joins a Dear Stranger letter program that leads her to track down an older woman and they bond over having both been driving in a car crash. Their relationship also leads Holly to reconnect with a man she met on the day of her crash.

This book is full of heavy topics - car crashes, miscarriage, loss, cancer, and family abandonment. Like her other books Emily Stone handles this very well! In this novel she touches on blame and the idea of fate. I loved Emma and Holly’s relationship so much and enjoyed reading it develop throughout the book.

I think there was an awful lot of blame back and forth and that got a little annoying but overall it was handled well. I also really enjoyed that the sad part of the book happened at the beginning rather than the end like Stone’s other novels. Her books are always sold as Christmas novels but this book takes place over a year and could be read at any time.

Love Holly was very grim and heartbreaking from the beginning. It talks a lot about loss and the pain of moving on. It does end on a hopeful note. I thought this book would be a bit more Christmas-y but it’s not really. It’s set during the holidays but that is not the main focus of the story. Overall, I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from this author!

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC publication for an honest review.

This book touched my heart so much! This is a story of tragedy, and healing. A book of finding forgiveness and granting permission to forgive self. Our three main characters, Holly, Jack, and Emma's paths are all delicately intertwined by what can only be called fate. And a beautiful love story unfolds as the broken pieces are put back together through bonds of friendship, family, and romance...the story is heartbreaking as well as heart lifting.

5 stars

This was a nice book. It covered lots of hard topics and feelings, but it was well done.

It dealt with a lot of grief and heartbreak. Our main characters both had family issues they were working on the whole time.

I did really enjoy each scene with Holly and Jack. Their chemistry was off the charts and that's what kept me going more than anything. I loved seeing them handle these crazy, coincidental situations together and how they yearned for each other when they were a part. It was really romantic in so many ways.

There was nothing particularly sparkly about this book. I usually feel like holiday romances have just a touch of magic to them, but I didn't feel that with this one. Maybe it was the more serious tone. Also, I ended up not really loving that this book takes place over a year. It made things feel drawn out and slow-paced.

Overall, this was a nice book. Nothing that will stand out to me moving forward, but nice nonetheless.

Do you love
-small town romance
-serendipity
-second chance
-Christmas Time
-Letters

Do you ever wonder about what if, fate, things meant to be or serendipity? Holly doesn't but her sister believes enough for the both of them. But when tragedy hits the same day you accidentally bump into a cute guy who is definitely flirting with you, he might just not been the one.

Holly is now estranged from her family but as she tries to heal she writes a letter to someone who might be struggling like her. Then as fate would have it she receives a letter that is about to take her on a whirlwind. She is going to meet some interesting characters and maybe even get a second chance a love.

Having read and loved her previous books I knew I’d probably shed a tear or two. It’s a beautiful story about someone who needed a family and found it in an unconventional way. So be prepared to have this book pull at your heart strings in the best possible way.

Hope you love this book as much as I did.

Holly joins a letter-writing program for people alone at Christmas. When she meets elderly Emma through the letter, she goes on a mission to connect Emma with her family.

Along the way, she meets Jack whom she had a connection with the year she separated from her family. As their lives intercept, Holly needs to decide how truthful to be and how soon into their budding relationship.

Like every Emily Stone book, her newest Christmas book will have you crying as well! #gifted

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group.

I was a bit nervous to read this novel as I’ve read a previous Emily Stone novel and while I enjoyed that one, I was not prepared for the level of hurt the story put me through. While this story does deal with deep and tragic elements and is not a light hearted romance, it was very well written. I loved all of the characters, as grumpy and imperfect as they were. There were some actions I disagreed with due to extreme lack of communication between the said parties, but everyone handles grief differently so I found a way to respect each characters actions. The ending was one that the reader sees coming, but it is so well executed and leaves the reader feeling hopeful instead of hopeless.

Yes, this story takes place around Christmas, but I would not categorize this as a holiday novel in general. Please take note of trigger warnings for off page infertility and miscarriage occurences. The references are not extremely detailed or graphic but there are references to both throughout the story.

Overall I really enjoyed the story and how it was told, especially getting the dual POV of both the main male character and the main female character.

This is such a lovely and beautiful holiday romance. Holly ends up meeting Jack at a coffee shop on Christmas Eve on a trip with her sister. When Holly and her sister get in a car accident after just leaving the coffee shop she never sees Jack again. After the accident Holly is estranged from her sister and receives a letter from Emma who is also struggling. Until this holiday letter Holly has no idea who Emma is or where she lives, but when Emma mentions that special coffee shop Holly decides to go track Emma down. After a rough meeting Holly and Emma become close and Holly wants to help repair Emma’s familial relationships before her cancer gets worse. Holly is astonished to discover Emma’s grandson is Jack, who she hasn’t seen since their fateful meeting at the coffee shop. Can Holly help Emma and Jack reconcile their past? Will she be able to do the same with her sister? Can Holly and Will finally get their timing right?

This was another wonderful holiday romance by Emily Stone with evolving characters and deep relationships. What a wonderful read!