When Lexie’s estranged father dies and leaves her half his business with the caveat that she work side by side with a stranger for a year and turn a profit. Once she fulfills these expectations, she can sell her half and go back to her nomadic ways. Soon, she finds it is much more complicated as Theo, her co-owner dislikes her and she doesn’t much like him, and Lexie is not quite sure she is cut out to stay in one place. During this time, Lexie must also contend with the feelings of abandonment she has over her father leaving and Rachel, his daughter from his second marriage. Soon, she and Theo are finding their ways to work together as a team and the slow burn between the two begins. Filled with interesting characters that surround Lexie with the love she needs and stories about the father she misses.
Thank you to NetGalley and Dell Publishing for the advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

I’ve really been into Christmas themed books lately. Perhaps it’s because we are on our 100 something day of temperature over 100 degrees and I’m longing for the holidays. This one fit the bill perfectly.

I loved the Christmas theme that was present throughout the story. The story took us all over Europe and through Christmas markets in different countries. The main tropes are forced proximity and enemies to lovers.

My favorite part of the story was the relationship between the MC and her father. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I won’t say much. But their story was so heartwarming. I also appreciated the growth of our MC.

This is the perfect holiday read and not to be missed!


Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Dell for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Emily Stone, and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this one! I had seen some negative reviews saying this lacks emotion, but apparently we were reading different books because this book had plenty of emotion! This is a romance, but the story is more complex than that. It’s about hurt, forgiveness, healing, family, and love. The relationship between Lexie and Theo is no more important than her relationship with her sister nor her past relationship with her dad. Theo too has a complicated relationship with his parents. I think the business that Theo and Lexie have to run together sounds amazing and I loved all the travel in the book. A perfectly sweet and tender story for the holidays!

For what i thought would be a fun, holiday romance starts grim and stays harsh. We start with Lexie getting the news her father has died and then having to attend an awkward funeral as she struggles to deal with the fact they were estranged due to his leaving her mother when she was a kid to start a new family and the many broken promises he made her - and he was still her dad so she has complicated feelings. THEN she finds out he left her half his travel package company AND because of legal reasons she is stuck with running it AND she has to work with a guy she hated on sight when they met at the funeral.

So..... this is supposed to be an enemies to lovers, but I never bought the chemistry, and couldn't believe they could get to anything more than cordial with each other.

Plus, all the inheritance shenanigans were ridiculous and i had a hard time suspending my disbelief.

While being a good holiday read, this book wasn’t what I expected. I enjoyed the traditions that Lexie and her dad created to celebrate Christmas, but what stood out to me the most was how important communication and forgiveness are in our relationships. It took awhile for Lexie to realize that her dad truly did love her and held their traditions close to his heart. This was a good book. I’m glad I had the opportunity to read it.

I received an advanced readers copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine | Dell for allowing me to read an ARC of A Winter Wish by Emily Stone, in exchange for my honest review.

Such an enjoyable read! Growing pains and all that comes with it. Happiness, grief, growth, self-awareness, and the love of family and friends.

I love the idea of seeing the world through celebration!

Lexie was shocked to discover that she had inherited half of her father’s holiday travel company, R &L Travel -See the World through Celebration! After all, they have hardly spoken over the last 10 years.

It is a successful niche business specializing in trips that explore the holiday traditions of cultures all over the world-something they used to do as a family each Christmas-until he left and started a new family with another woman.

The other half of the company has been left to Theo-her father’s good looking young executive. The will stipulates that the two of them must find a way to run the company together for a year and turn a profit, before deciding whether or not to sell.

He wants to keep it. She wants to sell.

Can he change her mind in time?

I always look forward to Emily Stone’s holiday romances, but this wasn’t a favorite., Perhaps it is because the ENEMIES to LOVERS trope is a hard sell for me. How does a person almost instantly fall in love with someone who is self admittedly usually acting like a petulant child? It’s NOT an attractive quality.

This isn’t a bad story BUT although the travel company idea sounds wonderful, and Lexie shows some personal growth by the end of it-this just didn’t quite work as a romance for me!

The “JOURNEY” wasn’t that enjoyable, I didn’t “FEEL” any chemistry between them, and I WASN’T rooting for them to get together as a couple which are three MUSTS in any romance novel.

But, I am still a fan of the authors work, and will look forward to whatever she pens next!

Expected publication date: October 15, 2024

Thank You to Dell for the gifted ARC provided through NetGalley. As always, these are my candid thoughts.

It’s time for the holiday reads and I am ready! I can’t wait for more. This really set the tone and was absolute perfection of Christmas romance in a bundle book.

Thank you NetGalley and Dell for the ARC! When Lexie receives a call that her father has passed, she's not sure how to feel. They've been estranged for several years now. Her parents had divorced and he remarried and always seemed to choose his new family over her. He never even let her know that he was sick. She returns home for the funeral and discovers that she's also been included in his will. To Lexie's surprise, her father has left her half of his travel business. She doesn't want it, but can't just let it go as she will be sharing the business with Theo, a young man with whom her father has been running the business. Now Lexie must navigate learning and running the business with Theo (which can be a struggle as Lexie is sure Theo doesn't like her) and deal with her mixed feelings about whether to sell the business when the time is up while coming to enjoy the work of planning and running the trips. Readers of Emily Stone will once again enjoy how she blends the emotion of the story (Lexie's struggle with unresolved issues and grief) with romance.

Thank you @netgalley and @randomhouse for the advanced digital copy of A Winter Wish by Emily Stone!

I did enjoy the premise of the business being a travel agency curating really thoughtful holiday trips exploring culture and traditions around the world while working with local businesses. I do feel like travel agencies are making a come back, but it was hard to buy them having a storefront in this day and age. I get it had to be done bc how else would Lexie and Theo be able to form a romance, but still.

I think the thing I disliked most, though, was Lexie as a character. As someone who doesn’t have a great relationship with her dad, I get the resentment, but Lexie just felt like a petulant 16 year old which was annoying.

It didn’t feel overtly “Christmasy” either other than the fact that they were planning Christmas trips. I feel like most events could have happened at any time of year.

To sum it up, I was all in for a cheesy hallmark-esque story and this missed the mark.

As always, take this with a grain of salt. Every book is not for everyone. You may love it!

I can honestly say I am never disappointed with an Emily Stone book and look forward to a new one each year. While Christmas plays a part in the story it's really just a backdrop and a way to see the changes the characters have undergone during the year. The writing as always is done well and I'm still amazed at how easily I can connect to all of her characters and how much I end up caring for them and wanting things to go their way. This book is a lovely story about moving past grief and being able to move on and as ever with her books there's some forgiveness involved. I really enjoyed this novel and will of course be recommending it. I want to thank Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

This book started a little slow for me and took me a little bit to get into. It started to pick up and I enjoyed the story and thought it was a sweet read. Theo and Lexie became a good team and I liked how both were able to tell their stories. Their history really defined who they were and how they handled different things that popped up. Overall a good read.

I really enjoyed A Winter Wish. It gave me all the feels from happy to sad and tears mixed in. Lexie got a surprise she never expected after her father's death, half of her dad's travel company. An enemies to lovers co-owners troupe. Relatable storyline with likeable characters.

I really enjoyed this book ! I think it gave me more traveling vibes than Christmas holiday vibes, which was fine because I love anything travel related. I liked the tension/romance between the main characters. I liked the healing Lexie went through the book coming to terms with her father's passing and her complicated relationship with him. I even shed a few tears during the end of the book. I recommend giving this one a read !

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group Ballantine for the digital arc in exchange for my honest review.

"A winter wish" by Emily Stone will be out on October 15.
"Judging" the book by its cover, I was expecting a pleasant and light Christmas read, especially because the cover is very sweet and Christmasy.
Instead, themes such as mourning and "rediscovering oneself" are discussed. I was expecting a purely Christmas setting, but instead the story is evolving around Christmas's time,I was hoping Christmas was almost a third protagonist.
Lexie receives as an inheritance, half of her father's company, a father who was mostly absent, and with whom she almost had no relationship.
Theo manages the other half, he is a boy who has a close bond with Lexie's father, almost a partner, and who in recent years has been his right hand man.
The two must learn to live together in this new working situation.
Unfortunately several times I risked "not finishing" this book, as already mentioned, I expected it to be a little lighter.
I thank the author, Penguin Random House and Netgalley for the opportunity to preview this book.

What a pleasant surprise!

I’ve read more than a few lackluster holiday romances this year - saccharine books that ultimately lack any kind of real depth, with the kinds of plots that seem more like punchlines about Hallmark movies rather than something to be taken seriously. And so this book, revolving around a holiday-themed travel company, written by an author who has only written holiday-themed books, didn’t initially inspire much hope. How happy I was to be wrong!

This book is so much more than cutesy trips and stolen kisses though, to be fair, there are plenty of both. Taking place in the year following her father’s death, this book follows Lexie on a journey of self-discovery as she learns what it means to grieve under complicated circumstances.

I do wish Theo had been more fleshed out. As it stood, I enjoyed reading as their relationship unfurled but he was still largely an enigma, or maybe a bit one-dimensional compared to Lexie. Either way, still a solid read and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine for the advanced reader copy of this book, provided in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

This was my very first Emily Stone book and I adored it. A Winter Wish is a story that will warm your heart. Our main character is in a journey of self reflection and healing as she grieves her father. I loved seeing a main character that is relatable. I was really please with the character development and loved learning about every single character in the story. As someone grieving a loved one this book was healing.

Thank you to the author for such a wonderful story, to the publisher for the eARC and to NetGalley.

This beautiful novel about imperfect people is thoughtful and real and just meanderingly pleasant. There are bits of slowness and some frustration with characters who don't grow as fast as you want them too. The end is charming though, the book is clean, and the story feels real and authentic, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks #netgalley for the ARC copy for an honest review.

This is a charming book for those wishing they could tag along with some exciting group trips with adventure and cultural experiences.

Lexie has no idea how fortunate she is to learn that her father has left her with half of his travel company in his will. She is told that the other half is now in the hands of Theo who has been working for her father for five years. Of course, Lexie is beautiful, Theo is handsome and they are both single. We all know what will happen and yet, there has to be more to the story.

It's ideally a book one would want to read in a weekend at a ski lodge sitting in a cozy chair. Yet, for those of us with plenty of imagination and a bowl of chips, we will make due. Lexie has a stubborn side and doesn’t want to feel compelled to follow her dad’s goal in life with the company in Bath, England even though it seems like so much fun. It’s a love story and very predictable although Lexie is in need of a good therapist to address father issues. It’s a quick, girly book and it comes together with a satisfactory ending.

My thanks to Dell and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of October 15, 2024.

I wanted to DNF this book several times, but unfortunately my perseverance did not pay off. The FMC, Lexie, definitely has avoidant attachment type issues. The cause of those issues are valid but it’s basically her entire personality in this book. I just wanted to shake her, despite how much I sympathized with her. Theo, the MMC, is bland. The only person I actually wanted to read more about was Rachel, Lexie’s half sister. I think her character arc would have made a much more interesting story between her guilt/grief about her father, her strained relationship with her mom, and the fall out of her romantic relationship.

I received an ARC of this book for free from NetGalley, but this did not impact my rating/review. This book is scheduled to be released on October 15, 2024.