The Holiday is one of my favorite movies and this novel seemed like the perfect winter read. As with the Holiday, it is really about the women and their self-journey and figuring out who you really are.

Unfortunately, I am unable to finish this one. I went into it under the impression it was a f/f relationship between the two main characters. Instead it follows two separate couples, one being a straight couple. This is just not my cup of tea and I wouldn’t be able to rate it fairly !

Thank you Harper Voyager and Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. The Holiday is one of my favourite Christmas movies so of course the premise of a house swap romance immediately caught my eye.

I really loved both Clover and Bee. They go on huge personal journey’s in this book and their characters have far more focus than the romances and I really enjoyed getting to know them as they got to know different parts of themselves.

Both romances were sweet and I was definitely rooting for both couples.

I ADORED all the side characters. This book has so many vibrant, wonderful, loveable side characters and every single one of them brought me joy.

A wonderful Christmas read.

Bee needs a break from her life and decides to use a popular house-swap app to book a holiday getaway. She swaps her San Fransisco apartment with Clover’s cozy small-town Ohio home. While swapping Clover finds herself getting closer to Bee’s sister and Bee finds herself falling for Clover’s ex-fiance.
If you love the movie The Holiday, this book is for you! I loved every moment of it from start to finish. Even though Bee and Clever were completely different, they were both so easy to root for. This was a fun cozy read for the holidays!
Thanks to Avon Books and NetGalley for the advance copy.

**Thank you to Avon Books for this free digital review copy.**

I love a house swap/life swap Christmas story, and despite this being the second in a row that I've read this year, I loved it! The characters all delighted me, and it was fun seeing the farm girl in the city and the city girl on the farm and how well they adapted to their new environments. All of the side characters really helped with this, as they accepted the newcomers and helped to make their vacations and their holidays special. I cried at the love shown through patience, presence, and music. And I even felt like these characters might make some big life changes in order to live happily ever after!

This is a great entry into the sub-sub-genre of 'The Holiday' Christmas rom-coms. The characters are fun and fairly deep, though I could've done with less of a positive spin on Teslas in the first chapter. Overall, though, a great Christmas diversion, highly recommended.

Absolutely LOVEDDDDDD this book! Once I got all the characters together it came together beautifully. I love angsty slow burns and this did the trick. I just came back from San Francisco and I felt transported there with Bee and Clover!

Cute, very "The Holiday"esque, where two women switch houses for the holiday season, from Ohio to SanFran and vice versa. It was very Christmassy, so that was good, but I didn't think the characters were super developed. There were two "main" couples, and I didn't feel much when they eventually got together (79% of the way thru 😭).

Thanks Netgalley for the ARC!

I needed a little cozy Christmassy book to read so this was just in time. If you like Hallmark type holiday movies I'd say this is perfect. Easy read if you need a palette cleanse.

A delightful and heartwarming holiday story about two different women - each whom find love and acceptance when they swap places (literally). This is a perfect read for those feeling restless and misplaced this season.

Premise like The Holiday in which 2 women switch residences for December and have their own love stories.

Clover goes from her farm in Ohio to SF, wanting to try something new after a year of difficulty- her mom dying and breaking up with her childhood love turned fiance. Highlights include: looking up someone from her past and meeting someone new.. rediscovering her queerness and making new friends, and wondering how to keep your ex who was/is also your best friend in your life in a way that won’t hurt either of you.

Bee is in the high pressure tech world nearing burnout and escapes to farm country. Highlights include: rediscovering her creativity, finding balance in caring for yourself but still being taken care of, overhearing gossip at the coffee shop and going to caroling and tree lighting etc, healing high power family dysfunction, and Clover’s ex who is still the on site farm manager and around all the time… he chops wood at one point 🙃

I just really loved this. It’s a slow burn that works for me (eventual fade to black where you don’t miss out on any of the relationship building), not so much insta love which is nice for these kinds of temporary vacation premises sometimes, more like a HFN, the rest is still beginning kind of vibes but I believe in these relationships ❤️💚

Thank you to Avon for the eARC!

This is my first read from Georgia K. Boone and I enjoyed it. The Holiday is one of my favorite movies so when I read the synopsis I was all in. I do have to say this felt more like a women’s fiction with romantic aspects as opposed to a romance book. I loved the dual timelines and seeing both Bee and Clover truly come into themselves. I ate Clover and Beth up and watching Clover get the opportunity to truly be herself after feeling stifled at home was great and a reminder of how important representation is in all things. Now Bee and Knox, idk, they were cute but it still felt like Knox was trying to get over Clover so I can’t say I was as invested and I was with Clover and Beth. This definitely gave me cozy vibes though and while I’d never leave San Francisco for an Ohio farm I’m glad everyone got their HEA. Thank you to Avon and NetGalley for the ARC.

This was just such a fun, and quick read. I absolutely flew through it. I love a house swapping story, and this one was just really well done. I thought Bee and Clover were great main characters, and I loved how this book was more focussed on their personal journeys. They both had very different issues going on in their lives but both of them just weren't happy with where they were at, and just needed a change to be able to properly find themselves. I just really enjoyed the way that was done throughout the book.
I also quite liked the romances. They are a bit insta-love, but also weirdly slow burn. I don't know how to explain it. This book just fits into both categories for me. Anyway, I thought the matches were quite well done, and I truly thought there were a lot of cute moments between our two couples. I also liked how each of their love interest ended up being cheerleaders for our main characters as well.
Every good, cozy Christmas read has a great cast of side characters, and this was no exception. In both locations we had such a great cast. In San Francisco we had such a fun cast of a queer second family friend group. I love how loudly themselves those characters were. It was such a fun group, while also just overall being a great supportive friends for Clover as she's struggling through some things. In Salem we had our typical small town "eveyone is family" dynamic. I loved how everyone just easily let Bee into their hearts, and she found her place there so well. I especially loved Clover's dad. He was just such a fun side character, with so much love. There are 2 scenes in this book that made me cry, and both of them had him at the center of it. He truly feels like the big heart of this book.
My big complaint of this book though was the ending. It felt so incredibly rushed, and abrupt. I feel like this book could have benefited with like 50 or so extra pages just to flesh that ending out a bit more. There are many things that just felt dropped by the end. There also were some things that we didn't get a proper resolution for, and some logistics that don't make the most sense. Because the romances were a bit of a slower burn, their endings just were extremely rushed, and I don't know if I fully believe in the epilogue. It just all felt extremely rushed, and just a couple of added pages would have easily solved that, and that's why it is so frustrating to me. But yeah, up until that ending this honestly was nearly perfect.

3.5
This was a very cute holiday romance. Nothing extraordinary, but it scratches that itch.

I love the move "The Holiday," so when I found out there was a version of it with diverse characters coming out, I had to read it! Both FMCs are black and one of the romances is sapphic. Clover Mills leaves her farmer and ex-fiancé in Ohio for San Fran while Bee takes a much needed break from work and family in Bee's Ohio home. Both end up in cute little romances with just a dash of spice (fade to black) and its heartwarming without being saccharine. There's also a pretty great wood-chopping scene...

3.5/5 stars ⋆˙⟡

My immediate reaction upon finishing this was pure delight. This was a wholesome Christmas story with wonderful side characters, both a small town and big city Christmas setting, and cutesy romances....but the more I sat with it, the more a few (not-so-great) things started to stick out to me more than the cuteness. The romances in this seem incredibly rushed and falls into the instalove category (IMO). Sometimes, this is fine but in general, it allowed us little room to see the chemistry between these two couples. If the story had been longer, I think we could've had more time with the main couples and although I loved the side characters, I almost felt like we spent more time getting to know all of them rather than our love interests.
*Spoilers Incoming (although it's very obvious from the get-go who ends up with who)*

Clover and Beth are more of a believable couple solely on the stereotype that lesbians move fast however, you can't tell me there's not a toooon of unpacking that Clover needs to do to have a healthy queer relationship since she kinda just came out to herself and the world??? Knox and Bee also felt a little off and I'm not quite sure what it was but I still enjoyed their banter and Knox getting to heal. Overall, instalove just never feels believable to me but if you don't mind it, this is a super cute super quick read that would be great to pick up at this time of year!

Mini Playlist:
Last Christmas - Chappel Roan & Sabrina Carpenter Cover (ofc)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Pheobe Bridgers
Christmas Tree Farm - Taylor Swift

A huge thank you to NetGalley & Avon and Harper Voyager for the e-arc in exchange for a review.

thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of I’ll Be Gone For Christmas in exchange for an honest review!

This was a sweet holiday romance read! I enjoyed the pacing of this novel and how the story moved along. The ending felt a bit rushed, but other than that it was well paced and moved along well. The romance was slower, but I enjoyed the other aspects of the story like each character finding who they are outside of their usual environment. I would have loved a few extra chapters at the end, but it was wrapped up nicely. The characters were all very likable and felt authentic!

This was such a cute sapphic reimagining of The Holiday! Our two fmc's are burnt out in their lives and need an escape. They use the Vacate app to house swap with each other, so one of them heads to rural Ohio while the other heads to San Francisco. Unexpectedly they of course, find romance. It's has dual povs and is a super slow burn. This book is a short, quick read with great character development and fun holiday romance.

Thank you, NetGalley and Avon/Harper Voyager, for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was the perfect book to kick off the holiday season. Such a cute sapphic romance. A little slow to at first.

this book had a cute premise and sapphics which i love and not to mention the cover, but i found the actual book to be too slow for me

I wish I liked this book more because the concept is a really fun one, but unfortunately it overall didn’t end up working for me.
I liked the characters, side characters included. I actually enjoyed spending more time with them than I did the main characters some of the time. I liked the entire novel in theory—experiencing something new and growing from it—but I think there was too much going on.
The biggest thing I think is that it felt like the plot went in circles for more than half of the novel. That made it really hard to make me want to pick it up, and the way too slow burns of the relationships didn’t help. I think that ironically the plot was too slow and too rushed at the same time. Because if they dallying at the beginning, there just wasn’t enough time for one, much less two, fully realized relationships, and it showed. The relationships seemed left with a finite amount of space to grow and never dealt with that. There were also family/personal subplots that felt similarly rushed just due to time and space constraints, and I wish those had more space to breathe.
I was also disappointed that one of the relationships, and the one that had the most development and time together, wasn’t sapphic, as queer romance was most of what drew me to this book. And I have to be honest I’m not sure I loved the writing. That’s just a personal preference, but I found it worth mentioning.
It’s not to say people should read this book because I know a lot of people have enjoyed it. But I think it deserved more space than it got.