Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC of Time to Rise by Heléne Holmström; translated by Marlaine Delargy in exchange for my true thoughts.

This book gave everything that I enjoy about a romance story. It gave reality tv, forced proximity, enemies to lovers, and flashbacks with a purpose! I was surprised by the dual timeframe, but it fit perfectly within the story and characters. Although, I did enjoy the characters of the flashback more than the present day characters. I loved that both women in the story had great friendships and support systems, I enjoyed the scenes that involved Nora's friends. She seemed more herself with those women than she did in other scenes.

This book left me wanting more from the present day characters, Nora and Eklund. Some things felt off for these two characters (bookstore scene). I wish we just got a little bit more before that scene occurred to make it more "in character" for them. It left me wondering if it would have been easier to avoid the enemies to lovers trope and use the fake dating trope instead, it felt like that was set up, but wasn't followed through on.

Overall I would recommend this book if you enjoy the cooking channel, books set in reality tv, and bread! If you're looking for an easy read and hungry for some cinnamon rolls.

Time to Rise is two stories in one. In present day, struggling bakery owner Nora Jansson participates in a reality TV show hosted by gruff celebrity pastry chef Henrik Eklund in an effort to save her family business. In 1945, we follow Tuula, a Finnish widow and her two kids struggling to fit in after taking refuge in Sweden.

I also really enjoyed reading something set in Sweden, which I don't get much opportunity much. This was a compelling story featuring four interesting characters that had me turning the page. I really felt sad seeing Tuuli struggle with anti-Finnish xenophobia and Nils being under the thumb of his controlling father.

However, I did have issues with plot development. The reality show machinations felt a bit half baked. Given Nora and Henrik clashed, I didn't buy that the producer would want them to pretend they're dating without actually manipulating it for the cameras. It just didn't make sense. I also had whiplash between Henrik's attraction to Nora, while then reverting back to gruffiness. I think if the reality show was thought through more, this could've been stronger.

Overall this was the perfect sort of escapist fiction I was craving for. I hope that we can see more Swedish romance authors translated into the English, I certainly would love to read more from Heléne Holmström.

Thanks to Amazon Crossing and NetGalley for the ARC.

I was originally drawn to this due to the setting (Sweden) and the MFC’s struggling family business (bakery/patisserie). Add in the sourdough starter and Christmas time. Combine with enemies to lovers, and toss in a past timeline, and I was really looking forward to this.

I did enjoy this, and really loved the focus on Christmas traditions and food.



Thank you to Amazon Crossing and NetGalley for the DRC

Thanks to the publisher for an eARC provided through NetGalley. The following is my honest and personal review of the book.

Time to Rise is a fun romcom set in Sweden that follows two storylines.

The first is set in the modern day, about a TV show host who helps bakers improve their business and products, and a small town bakery owner whose friend entered into the show. Both of these people come from a long line of bakers, him on his paternal side, and her on her maternal side, and so they are very passionate about what they do.

To complicate things, his TV show persona is mean and condescending, while she refuses to be made to look stupid when she is confident that she is a better baker than him. And neither of them can back out of the show.

In parallel, we follow a storyline from 1945, where a Finnish widow who is passionate about baking migrates with her two children to Sweden and takes a job working as a packer in a family-owned up-and-coming bakery, run by the family’s single son.

And the two storylines eventually collide in the cutest way.

I enjoyed reading the book, the story flows easily, and it is a warm and fluffy romcom.

Both Nora and Henrik have their motives for the show to go on, which got me invested in it as much as they were. And they both are skilled bakers, which makes their quarrels and disagreements plausible.

Tuula and Nils’ storyline was so tender, and it left me with a little heartbreak.

The parallels between the two storylines are pretty clear, and it was easy to draw conclusions and make predictions, but it was in line with what I would expect of a romance story, and I was glad to be reading a book where a happy ending is pretty much guaranteed.

I also loved how the storylines diverged from each other, particularly, how Henrik and Nils handled their relationship with their fathers. I also appreciate the way that both Nora and Tuula contributed to those decisions.

The side characters were interesting and diverse, and I liked to see female friendships throughout the story. And I enjoyed the glimpse into Swedish Christmas traditions!

However, in Nora and Henrik’s storyline, there was more telling and not as much showing as I would have liked, especially regarding their quarrels and their romance. I usually love reading banter, and I felt there was room for more. I also felt the ending was a bit abrupt since the issue of sourdough starter, which is the core of the whole book, did not feel resolved until the epilogue.

Thank you so much to the publisher for an eARC via NetGalley. All opinions are honest and my own.

I went into to this with relatively low expectations, thinking it was just going to be an average read. However I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading and I realized that there's a lot more to this book than what meets the eye (and the information you get from the synopsis).

You are, in fact, following a very head strong Heroine, Nora, who is taking part in a reality TV show about baking, but she's doing in order to safe her bakery from bankruptcy. This bakery has been passed down for her great grandmother all the way to her. And this is where I was surprised. This is dual POV, following the MMC, Henrik, and FMC, but also dual time-line as you keep something going back to 1945 following two other character that tie in with Nora and Henrik in the end.

The MMC, Henrik, at first you would think that he has it all. He is apart of a successful family business and he is the main star of a reality TV show (kinda of like Gordon Ramsy in Hell's Kitchen but with baking). However, he is not happy with the business, he wishes to come back to his roots and make it more traditional. And when it comes to his show, his views seem to be tanking.

The setting was very cozy, you are in a small Swedish village by the sea. There's all this description of warm and sweet food, like cinnamon rolls. Would be a perfect read for the winter months, specially Christmas because the reality tv show is a season special.

The romance is an enemy to lovers, slow burn. But i don't think it was the main centre piece of the novel, it was more of to people growing, figuring out their lives and coming together in the end.

In general read this if you enjoy:
- Reality TV
- Baking
- Enemies to Lovers
- Cozy Setting

For fans of Rebecca Yarros, Taylor Jenkins Reid and Beth

i see a book with a main character named nora and i click it’s the self love gene! anyway i received this from netgally in exchange for an honest review. i loved loved british bake off on crack! with a romantic subplot (or main plot it’s okay!) i hope the translation didn’t take away from it’s original beauty, an extra star for nora obviously.

I was not a big fan of this book - also disappointed there was not a great ending.

This just wasn’t a great book for me.

I picked this up for the gorgeous cover and the Swedish setting. It is such a delightful read that has all the ingredients to make a good romance — a struggling bakery, cinnamon buns, a hot TV host and a family history that gets uncovered alongside the main plot.

I highly recommend to all romance readers.

This story of a Swedish baker desperate to save her family bakery, and the TV show that comes to "fix" it, takes the reader into a fully-formed, enticing world, filled with the scent of fresh-baked sourdough and Nordic Christmas cheer. This was a fun take on a well-worn formula, and I enjoyed it very much!

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an Advanced Readers Copy of the title!

Nora is running her family bakery in Sweden into the ground. It’s been years since she redecorated, or changed a recipe, and she has way too many items on the menu to ever make a profit. She’s in trouble.

Her best friend Bea secretly submits Nora’a bakery to a reality show in order to save it, and Nora is less than pleased. She gets chosen, and Henrik Eklund, celebrity baker, is thrown into her life to make her question everything.

As someone who loves to bake, I really enjoyed that this book was about bakers. Nora was mostly annoying and stubborn, but I cared about what happened to her bakery. Henrik was very reminiscent of Paul Hollywood, and this plot was hardly original, but I didn’t care. I liked that it was set in Sweden, someplace I’ve never been what would like to go.

There was also a subplot set in the past, which I thought was very original, but also slightly gave me the ick?

Overall an enjoyable read for sure.

this romance follows nora, a woman who is running her family bakery in a small town and hendrik, a celebrity baker with his own gordan-ramsey type baking show. since nora is struggling to keep the bakery open, her friend makes her take part in hendriks show. at the same time we follow nora and hendriks grandparents in a different timeline, right after WWII. the story is told from a 3rd person perspective. 2/3 of the book follows nora/hendrik and 1/3 follows the grandparents.

let me start by listing the things i thought were done well.
1: the translation. i loved reading a romance that took place in sweden & was actually written by a swedish author.
2: the settings, i guess this point kind of connects to the 1st point. the descriptions are great and i was able to get a really clear setting of the small town.
3: the book took place during christmas and i think if you are looking for a slow-paced, low stakes christmas romance you might really enjoy this one.
4: the characters felt realistic and mature enough. often the enemy to lovers trope just means “both the characters are incredibly immature”. the tension was believable and not forced.

now the things i did not like
1: the romance only starts 60% into the book. i would not have minded this if the first 60% had not been soooo boring. i guess that is my main criticism. it should have been edited down by A LOT. at 60% into the book nothing had really happened yet, neither in the romance nor in the actual plot. you just keep reading about nora’s grief, hendrik’s daddy issues & the show.
2: the dual timeline that did not really add anything. sometimes it was nice to be transported into their story, because nora and hendrik were incredibly bland and predictable. but then 1 page into the older timeline you’d be reminded, that so were the grandparents.
3: i did not really feel any connection to any of the side characters. usually the appeal of a small town romance lays with the found family aspect. nora does have her friends, but i did not think any of them were fleshed out enough to add anything substantial to the story.
4: the pacing. like i said the romance only really started at 60%, picked up around 75% and just felt kind of sudden.
5: hendrik. so bland. no backbone. i am not saying that every man in a romance novel needs to be big bad alpha man™️ or cute golden retriever angel. but… a little bit of flavour would have been nice.

in the end i gave it 2 stars mainly because it almost put me in a reading slump. i do feel the need to emphasize that i usually do not like slow-paced, dual timeline or celebrity romances. the writing definitely was not bad, it just was not for me.

thank you to Netgalley for the ARC! ❤️

The premise of this story was great but it had so many unexpected elements. The historical love story that ran alongside this one was such a surprise. It was really sweet and felt the most realistic romance of the book. The two MCs had a hot enemies-to-lover arc but would love for the chemistry to have built up more rather than a rush in the final chapters. Think the historical love story needs to be made more apparent in the marketing overall.

I love a good enemies to lovers story and was excited to read Time to Rise. The premise had potential but overall fell flat. I didn't care about the characters or the story. The ending felt forced and rushed. Just wasn't what I was hoping for.

I really like this book. It was nice to see for once to see MMC be the one who had problematic family situation and how he had to deal with it. Setting of the story was such a cozy town that made me want to visit it.

What a fun concept! I was drawn to this book because I love a good enemies to lovers plot, and it gets even better when there are flashbacks to relevant characters. Unfortunately, that's where much of the excitement ended for me. It was difficult to connect to the characters and felt like we were learning about them from a very far distance instead of feeling like they were our own friends or real people. There is the possibility this is due to the translation. I did enjoy how much baking was involved as well as daily Swedish culture. Thanks for letting me read this ARC!

It was an ok book, It wasn't super exciting and I wasn't super invested in the story. I didn't really click with the characters or the plot. However, it was still an ok read and perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it in Swedish.

DNF. An odd choice to translate such a blandly generic book. I really liked the concept here and it's a sharp cover design, but the content was dull, predictable, and occasionally embarrassingly badly written, particularly in the flashbacks to the 1940s where tensions between Swedes and Finns are treated with juvenilely black and white simplicity (people are mean to Finns! But this guy is not and can't understand why others are acting this way! Full extent of analysis).

DNF and then quickly skimmed

I am so very sorry that this book wasn't for me. I couldn't connect to the characters and felt the narrative was a little stilted. I'm not sure if this was due to the writing style or the translation, but whatever the reason I struggled with it.

From the cover and description I thought this would be a cute romance with a dash of comedy but I really didn't get the humour and the intimate scenes I found to be very uncomfortable reading.

So this book wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.
Love this book! The perfect small-town enemies to lovers as well as fake dating story set in a bakery in Sweden. I loved the characters and the family dynamics presented in the book. I am not normally a fan of a dual timeline, but in this case, I felt it really helped flesh out the story. A very enjoyable fast paced read and I definitely recommend this book!

im sorry but i didnt like it at all. i just didnt like the characters or the story line. the writing was fine but the story sadly wasnt for me.