This book is not for me. It’s written in very simple and poor language. It’s often confusing, despite it being incredibly basic and boring. I appreciate the opportunity to review but this one just isn’t for me.

Teenage Aurora met a canadian hockey player at the mall of america and she uses him as an excuse to get out of anxiety inducing social situations.

Years later, while teaching a kids' dance class, she met the same hockey player again with his daughter. Mike has a lot of issues over his wife's death. They become friends and it becomes harder and harder for her to tell him about her lie.

A very romantic novel about two characters who have a lot of issues to overcome. They are very sweet together despite their tragic pasts. Love this book.

Thanks to the publisher for the arc.

** Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC **

The absolute speed at which I downloaded and devoured this book though…

Cute Canadian NHL player? Check
Twenty-something coming into her own and facing her demons? Check
Sweet HEA at the end? Check check!

The book was a sweet romance with some depth - tricky parental relationships, tricky food relationships, dealing with grief, and an awareness of the mental load that women balance every day. I loved the relationships between Rory and Mike and Olivia. And the back and forth narrative between Rory and Mike gave good insight into their thoughts/feelings throughout. I do wish that the bulk of the HEA didn’t feel so rushed at the end.

My only (minor) complaint is that Rory referred to Mike by his first and last name an annoying amount (and far more than he did the same for her).

#CanadianBoyfriend #NetGalley

I always love a good hockey romance! This story had a fun premise and I enjoyed the way it addressed more serious issues, like anxiety and ED. I’m a Minnesotan so I, of course, loved all the references. will definitely be ordering copies for my bookstore!

This book had me simultaneously holding my pearls and kicking my feet. It still has a chokehold on me and I can not believe that it does not come out until January because who am I supposed to talk about it with until then? I am going to be ordering it to my bookstore as well as making it one of our book club picks for February!

This romance novel, told in dual points of view, was an absolute delight. It was so freaking fun and cute, but was very much a slow-burn type of love story. Not only is it a sweet sorta second chance trope, but the characters are so vulnerable with plenty of heart that adds depth. It was definitely well-written, however, some of the storytelling felt clunky in parts and even like some context was missing in parts. Also, as adorable as the epilogue HEA was, it felt like it was moving a bit too fast for me.

CW: Eating disorder, Panic attacks/anxiety, Death of a spouse

This story checked so many boxes for me!
- slow burn
- rounded characters
- characters that evolve and grow during the story
- addresses serious issues (grief, eating disorders, abuse, fame)
This sports romance digs deep - and I love it! So much that this story will definitely be a reread!

Canadian Boyfriend is a cute and sexy romance about Aurora and Mike. Aurora is a ballet teacher. Mike is a hockey player.

Aurora's keeping a secret. She's met Mike before, as a teenager. She modeled her fake boyfriend after him!

I really enjoyed the story line and the characters!

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a unique take on fake dating where Aurora creates a relationship with Mike in her mind, writing him letters, and telling people all about their "relationship" after meeting him while working in a coffee shop and having an instant attraction to him.
Fast forward a few years and they meet again. This time, Aurora is Mike's daughters dance teacher. The chemistry is still there but the timing isn't great as Mike's wife passed away 9 months ago.

There are quite a few heavy topics in this one: eating disorders, loss of a loved one (wife/mom) from a car accident

Overall I did enjoy this one and would recommend to others, however, a few parts did fall flat.

I love reading fake dating romance novels, but have never read one where part of the fake dating was a made-up boyfriend based. It was a really unique plot point to have Aurora make up a boyfriend based on someone she met as a teenager and then met later on in life again. I am also a huge fan of hockey romances, so the summary of this book was really intriguing to me.
I really enjoyed both characters in the main couple. They had me laughing when they would talk to each other, which made it a pleasant read. I also loved following along with Aurora's personal journey and see her being able to connect with ballet again in a way that was healthy for her. I can;t wait until this book is released so I can recommend it to my friends!

Canadian Boyfriend was a long read but a good one. Aurora is a professional ballet drop-out who is now teaching children's dance classes. She comes face to face with Mike Martin, the man she met as a teen and based a fake boyfriend on. Mike is reeling from the recent loss of his wife, and his daughter Olivia is struggling as well. Aurora is one of the only things that seems to make her happy, and Mike needs help with her care during his hectic professional hockey career, so Mike asks Aurora to be Olivia's nanny. Aurora reluctantly agrees, and the two form a friendship fairly quickly. Both of them have severe baggage, and Aurora is keeping a secret, but their attraction is undeniable.

This book deals with some heavy topics, like the death of a loved one, depression, and eating disorders, but it handles those topics with care; the emotions and plot points surrounding these topics seemed very believable. While this is a romance, the book isn't solely focused on that: there is a lot of healing from trauma that happens within the pages.

I think it’s fair to say that Canadian Boyfriend might be my favorite Jenny Holiday book to date. It did not match what I went in expecting, but in the best way possible, as it really delivered what I didn’t know I wanted.

I read this book over the course of a day and a bit, it was appropriately marked as both Women’s Fiction and Romance. It’s definitely one with a clear Lit Fiction, RomDram, Contremp Romance tilt. While it has plenty of light moments, it doesn’t shy away from some heavier topics, which I think were handled in a respectful but still light enough for a romantic read way (see below for content warnings).

I really love a book that strikes that balance with personal character growth and journey while maintaining a light-ish romance. This one had that balance for me (I’d say similar / more in line with a Beth O’Leary, Emily Henry type vibe).

I really loved both of our mains, I felt both Mike and Aurora (and Olivia), felt authentic and real in their emotions, reactions, and challenges. I wanted good things for both and was happy to get a dual pov where we could see their individual struggles/ journey, as well as their journeys together.

I loved that we got insight into their process of working through tough life events, traumas, etc. It wasn’t the whole focus, and it was still handled in such a way that the book felt light enough for me - but I love representation of real issues, healthy coping and work.

There were many tropes and elements present that I really enjoyed: sports romance, single parent, forced proximity, and some light epistolary elements (journaling, texts, letters).

Overall, I really enjoyed the read and also loved that it brought up some great thinking points for me. One I’d love to have read as part of a group to discuss some of the happenings. An emotional, but realistic read in how certain bits played out, yet still left me satisfied with the ending.

I’m glad there will be another book in the series, and am looking forward to reading Gretchen’s story next. Thank you to NetGalley and Forever for the opportunity to read an early copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own and freely offered.










CW: Grief (off page, prior loss of spouse and parent); therapy; disordered eating (prior, and work on); panic disorder; anxiety; childhood emotional neglect and abuse (prior, MC is learning to grow / heal from a toxic family relationship)

Book Review
Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny
Holiday

Triggers
Eating disorder
Body dysmorphia
Emotional abuse

Tropes
Hockey romance
Single Dad
Dance mom
HEA
Light on steam
Dog

❤️🇨🇦All the Canadian cliches and content- sorrries, chesterfields, and dbl dbls
I adored this! Its the Canadian details that drive home the title and give our MC a backstory.

💕Lets talk relationships- I love a HEA but sometimes in books it’s rushed and not really realistic- NOT with this book. Mike and Aurora talk things out… they fight, and they get frustrated with eachother . They have great dialogue and chemistry on the page and they both need to work on themselves a bit before they can move forward with new love.

I admire authors that can weave difficult social issues and traumas into healing, second chances and new beginnings.
Holiday does this well with her latest.

Thanks to @netgalley @readforeverpub and @grandcentralpub for my digital ARC in return for an honest review. Opinions expressed are my own.

As a teen, Rory had an encounter with a teenage hockey player as a mall barista. She created an alternate reality where she was her Canadian boyfriend and wrote him love letters. In a young adulthood where she struggled for a variety of reasons, he was her connection. Years letter, she's teaching ballet, and it seems one of the dads is THE CANADIAN BOYFRIEND. They start to form a friendship and also wonder if there might be more there. While a "fun" premise, this one also has some heavy feels in the topics it takes on. And while there's romance, it was also about people figuring out who they are in the "after" of different life things that had happened to them along the way. I found myself rooting for the characters and what might happen as things progressed. Thanks to NetGalley for the look at this January 2024 release!

These days, Aurora's life is simple but solid: she teaches dance and makes complicated coffee drinks, she's (mostly) over the eating disorder that plagued her younger years, and she tries not to spend toooo much time around her mother. But as a teenager, she couldn't dream of this: focused on a ballet career on stage, and largely isolated from her peers, she picked a random cute boy she'd met and reinvented him as her Canadian boyfriend.

That worked well enough, and then she grew up and moved on—but now the real-life Canadian boyfriend has shown up at her studio, and everything goes topsy-turvy again.

I'm low-key fascinated by the way "Canadian Boyfriend" feels like an updated, smarter Harlequin. You have a dancer and a hockey player (classic setup), and some conversations they should have had sooner (classic conflict), and exes who are either dead or dreadful (verrrrrry classic; means that they can't compete for the hero/ine's affections), and a heroine still battling some old demons.

But the updates: Mike is a hockey player, and a good one at that, but he's not the star of the show—he gets it done but isn't the sole reason his team wins their games. Aurora has a ballet background, and in one version of her life she could have been a star, but...that wasn't in the stars (so to speak), and she's happier for it. (The book doesn't, for various reasons, wax lyrical about her dancer's body, which alone is a step up from category romance, and for that I'm grateful. Also, I *love* that she's in that sort of liminal space of food issues where things are mostly better, but there's a ways to go—it's a hugely common and important space but one that is usually ignored in favor of more dramatic moments.) I whimpered aloud when we got the first hints that Mike and his wife, who semi-recently passed away when the book opens, hadn't had things quite as rosy as they'd seemed (because goddamn do I hate it when the ex is both evil *and* dead; it makes me sprain my eyeballs from how much rolling they have to do)...but then things get more complicated, and we get both realizations from Mike and open conversations between Mike and Aurora about that marriage, and my eyeballs remained uninjured.

I do wish they'd had those conversations-they-should-have-had-sooner, well, sooner—although I can understand both why Aurora shouldn't have had to bring it up sooner and why earlier discussions might have inhibited rather than eased the way for their romance. This should go over really well with those who like their romance classic but...emotionally available, let's say. 3.5 stars.

Side note, with a side of cryptic: I did read the discussion questions. (3) This is one of my favorite parts of the book, because it happens so rarely in romance novels. (7) Not really, but when Mike jokes about calling Olivia Daughter, that hit me like a punch in the gut, because my dad (whom I called by his first name) made similar jokes. (10) Ball pits are absolute germ buckets, and I am sufficiently germophobic that I wouldn't be caught dead in one. Actually, if you'll excuse me, just reading about them makes me need to go wash my hands...

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

This book had a really intriguing premise to me, but the execution felt mostly flat.

Aurora first meets Mike Martin briefly at the mall as a teenager and ultimately uses him as inspiration for the fake boyfriend who gives her an excuse to not attend school functions. Adult Aurora meets Mike again after he has lost his wife and she is teaching his daughter’s dance classes. She finds herself in a situation helping the two of them out and getting to know the real Mike.

As an individual, I liked Aurora and I admired her journey as she learned more about herself, recovering from a toxic experience as a ballet student and its lingering trauma. I enjoyed seeing her develop an inner strength and discovering that she could set healthy boundaries.

There were some really sweet moments between Aurora and Mike, as well as with his daughter Olivia. Mike and Olivia are both coping with the major loss in their lives. The two of them figuring out how to handle different moments of grief was authentic and honest. I felt like Mike and Aurora brought positive change and light to each other’s lives as they were on their individual journeys. However, I didn’t really feel any genuine chemistry between them. I didn’t believe that Mike was really in a place where he felt ready to move on, and it felt rushed toward the end to get him there. I thought the pacing of the book was kind of clunky and maybe that impacted how I felt about that. Also, it drove me absolutely out of my mind that Aurora referred to Mike as “Mike Martin” for the ENTIRE book. Not just to be cute here and there. All the time. I also didn’t believe the conflict was as big of deal as it was made out to be. I didn’t understand the big deal, unless it goes back to Mike not really being in a place where he was truly ready to move on and was looking for any reason to end a chance at that.

There was a lot of potential with the plot of this book, but ultimately it was just ok for me and didn’t work as well as I’d hoped it would.

CW: disordered eating (in the past), death of a character (in the past), parental abuse (in the past)

First things first, I am incredibly confused as to why the cover on NetGalley is different from the cover in the ARC and online. They give very different vibes, and feel kind of like a bait and switch (making me start reading annoyed). The cover here screams hockey romance, but it's more of a contemporary romance with a hockey player in it.

As the description suggests, the premise is very fun, and it plays on that well. We even get some of the letters that she wrote to Mike over the years in between chapters. One thing that annoyed me though is that whenever we are in Aurora's head, she refers to Mike by his full name: Mike Martin. Every. Single. Time. If just did it sometimes for emphasis it would be fine, but it was literally every time she thought of him. It became annoying fast.

Mike goes through a serious character arc here and deals with a lot of personal issues leftover from his wife passing away. One thing I really appreciate is how therapy is portrayed in the book. Mike and his daughter Olivia are in therapy from the beginning and Aurora starts once she is able to. These characters don't just get where they're going emotionally on their own, but with the help of a professional.

Overall, while I won't be re-reading and probably won't read more titles by the author, I think there is a target audience that will really enjoy it.

Aurora is a retired ballet dancer who is now teaching dance classes in Minnetonka, Minnesota, and trying to make ends meet. One day before class, she's shocked to see that one of her students' father is Mike Martin, professional hockey player for the Minnesota Lumberjacks. That shock is not because she is a huge hockey fan and is excited to meet a local star, but because she actually met Mike Martin more than a decade ago when he came into the Caribou Coffee where she was working, and she turned him into her fake Canadian boyfriend to give her an excuse for missing basically any and all social events at school. Ballet was her life, and she didn't fit in at school, so her fake Canadian boyfriend became a lifeline for her through harrowing years of constant training, emotional abuse from her mother, and serious issues with food. Meanwhile, the real Mike Martin made his way through the hockey ranks, fell in love, got married, informally adopted his wife's daughter Olivia, and then lost his wife in an car accident. When Aurora sees him again, he is bringing Olivia back to her dance class after she's taken a few minutes off in the wake of her mom's death. Olivia is struggling, and so is Mike, and Aurora ends up helping them out during Mike's hockey season, eventually moving in as a kind of part time nanny/family friend. Mike and Aurora are attracted to each other but they both have a ton of trauma to deal with, and their relationship gets messy. I always feel a little weird about romances that feature main characters who have been widowed, especially if the relationship starts too soon after the loss. This walked that line a bit for me, but ultimately I liked how it was handled despite my initial misgivings. Lots of content warnings here - emotional abuse from a parent, disordered eating, death of a spouse, and lots of grief just all around.

This book made me laugh, like laugh out loud at parts. Jenny Holiday has a way with words and this book is just so relatable even if it doesn't seem realistic.

Such a great book! I loved it! It was unbelievable to think someone she met would land up coming back into her life all those years ago and a famous hockey star none the less. I loved the bond between the daughter and her dad especially dealing with the loss of his wife and how it extended to or main character as well. The dance element was very cute as well. I was so rooting for them and hoping they landed up getting their happy ending! I was not disappointed.