i’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: second chance romance is one of my favorites.

when charlotte was growing up, she was mostly isolated and didn’t have an involved family. and then brighton moved in next door. and the two of them become best friends and eventually fiancées. but on the day of their december wedding, brighton leaves charlotte at the altar without a word.

flash forward five years later, the two of them accidentally end up at their respective best friends’ (who happen to be sisters) childhood home. charlotte is ice cold towards brighton, but she just wants to talk to her. and then they get snowed in together!!

this book was full of queer found family, holiday shenanigans, angst, YEARNING, and so much heart. I love found family, and this book hit me in the heart with that and the second chances at love.

obviously there was miscommunication and tbh charlotte was a bit cruel at points. but even so, I really did enjoy their love story.

what to expect
⟢ sapphic romance
⟢ childhood friends to lovers
⟢ second chance
⟢ forced proximity

Omg this was such a cute queer romance! I loved all of the representation especially bi representation. Our girls were queer and felt like real people. It made my heart so happy. Also @ashleyhblake knows how to right some 5 star side characters! I loved Sloane and Adele but even more minor characters like Wes had me throwing heart eyes!

This was a super fun, emotional read. I did get choked up on several occasions and I do wish Bright had done a bit more groveling but that’s because I love a good grovel 😂😂😂

Perfect for fans of LGBTQIA+ romance, second chance romance, and friends to lovers!

I am a MASSIVE SHLEY herring Blake fan, and although I tend to prefer spooky books right now, you just can’t beat an Ashley Herring Blake book!

I recently read Make the Season Bright and it was cute. It is the story of 2 women who were previously engaged, one jilted the other on their wedding day, when they get reunited years later on a holiday trip. There was holiday cheer and a pretty entertaining dating event in the little town, witty banter among their two friend groups, a little fake dating, so much inclusivity and some sweet and romantic moments. Just a little fun way to dip my toe into the holiday reads.

Not my favourite Ashley Herring Blake novel. I just couldn't connect to these characters as much as in her other books. Plus I am usually not a fan of second chance romances. And this is book is a classic example. They broke up for extreme reasons, one left the other at the alter, and it seemed like their reconciliation was too quick and not enough discussion was had.

Thanks to @berkleyromance for including me on the blog tour for #maketheseasonbright. This is the first of a slew of holiday romances I’m reading this season!

I enjoyed this well written sapphic holiday romance about two formerly engaged musicians who broke up but never got over each other.

Charlotte and Brighton live in separate cities now but neither of them ever got over the other. When they accidentally meet again on a Christmas break, all the good and bad things about their relationship come back. It’s finally time to deal with their unresolved feelings and hopefully come out stronger on the other side.

I really liked the music aspect of this story, the characters’ respective choices of instruments and songs says a lot about each of them. 4 stars.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley, I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This is my first time reading Ashley Herring Blake, and it won't be my last. I'm hooked. Make the Season Bright isn't your typical Hallmark style holiday romcom. It is a second chance romance with an abundance of heart and heat. I love the way AHB weaves the character's shared history into their present circumstances, revealing details at the right place in the narrative to make you feel compassion for each of them in turn. Their love story is a tender one, and you will be aching for Charlotte and Brighton to reconcile by the end.

The last thing Charlotte or Brighton expected from their last-minute Colorado Christmas adventure was to see each other. It's been 5 years since Brighton left Charlotte at the altar, and Charlotte decides the only way she can survive seeing Brighton again so unexpectedly is to pretend they've never met. She thinks maybe if she can just ignore her and act like indifferent acquaintances, she can survive Christmas with her friend's family. But Brighton and Charlotte have too much shared history to ignore, and their proximity forces them to confront feelings they've long tried to bury.

Book highlights:
- Queer normative setting with diverse characters
- Subversion of the fake dating trope
- A satisfying journey to healing & restoration for both characters

If you love a second chance romance and you're in the mood for a queer and cheery winter holiday setting, this book is for you.

This rating is sorta half-assed because life interrupted this read fairly substantially and I don't quite know if I would've felt less favourably towards it had I read it in one sitting or if I'm being nicer because I was just happy to be reading again after a week of reading nothing.

So, ta dah, a three.

There were some really lovely moments in the mix here. Some other bits I didn't quite get on with but Blake, savvy writer that she is, pays off those annoying bits of characterization with Very Good Reasons for why everything is hard earned. So, if you want to stock your seasonal TBR with something sapphic and second-chance-y with a mix of Scrooge and sweet, you could definitely do worse!

This was my first Ashley Herring Blake book and it did not disappoint!

This fantastic LGBTQ holiday themed romance follows Charlotte and Brighton, two childhood sweethearts who fell in love, and then crashed and burned out of love. After 5 years of not speaking both of them unexpectedly show up at a Colorado family friend's home for the holidays. What happens next is a series of unexpected events where Charlotte and Brighton must face each other and their shared past against their will.

This is a fantastic holiday second chance romance, its got Christmas-y settings, tension, spice, banter, a found family. Overall it was a solid read that I tore through in one night!

i think perhaps i may be done with ashley herring blake's books. so far, it seems like delilah green far and wide is the outlier within her bibliography for me and i have yet to read something from her that adequately encapsulates that same magic. unfortunately, make the season bright wasn't an exception to that rule.

this was fine, i guess. we have charlotte, who is a closed off mess ever since her fiancee brighton left her at the altar several years prior. i probably should have known this wouldn't be for me because i'm not a fan of second chance romances and i don't really think there's much that that would make me cheer for a reconnection after this set of circumstances. anyway, charlotte's not a fan of decembers, but gets strong-armed into spending christmas with her friend sloane's family where sloane's sister has brought home... you guessed it, brighton.

at this point in the story, i started to get pretty angry. part of the lore between charlotte and brighton is that brighton always referred to her as lola. pretty reasonable for charlotte not to want to be referred to by a pet name, especially since there's an unspoken agreement not to discuss the fact that they know each other. brighton continuously disrespects charlotte's express wish not to be referred to by the nickname and we're subjected to a lot of whining on her part about it.

i get it, these characters are complicated and when brighton made a choice to not go through with the wedding she had her own reasons for it, but the level of entitlement from so many of these characters made me so frustrated. see also: sloane, upon finding out charlotte's romantic history with brighton is straight up angry that charlotte never shared this with her, not even taking into account it was one of the worst moments of charlotte's life.

all in all this was a let down for me. i couldn't really get behind the romance, the book was missing all the fun secondary character inclusions that the bright falls series had going for it, and honestly? i didn't really think it was all that christmassy and the atmosphere fell pretty flat.

I don't know ya'll. I feel like a second-chance romance is a hard sell and I just wasn't rooting for these two to get back together. Your mileage may vary, but I think it was for the best that they broke up and have been living different lives. I requested this because I LOVED the Bright Falls series and I generally like a holiday romance. I did not read the description, so part of that is on me.

Charlotte is a professional violinist living in New York and 5 years ago, she was left alone at the alter by her childhood best friend and first love. A member of her quartet convinces her to fly to her home for Christmas, and she unexpectedly encounters another guest of the family- her ex. Brighton has been living in Nashville and her dreams of a music career kind of fell apart, but she thinks she made the right choice not getting married at 22 when she hated New York and wanted her own life. Now they are thrown together during the holidays and have to face the past and the reason neither of them ever really moved on.

For me the success of a romance is whether I want the characters together at the end, and personally I just didn't buy that this was going to work long term. A fling maybe? Sure, but I just didn't feel like they belonged together and their choices were really immature. Yeah they might be pushing 30, but it still doesn't feel like they're ready for a serious relationship. You may have a different experience but while there were elements of this I liked, it ultimately didn't work for me in the way I had hoped. The audio narration is fine though. I received a copy of this book for review, all opinions are my own.

what a wonderfull read! This book made me feel so many emotions and I flet so connected to these characters. From the moment I started I could not put it down!

Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

📖 what’s one of your Sunday numbers? Mine are: 2 cups of coffee, a 7 am wake-up, 1 class I’ve been working on, 1 table I’ve been trying to clean up by folding numbers items from the laundry.

Ashley Herring Blake is known for writing emotional romances & Make the Season Bright continues in that tradition.

This is a friends to lovers to breakup- to friends/ lovers romance arc so there’s plenty of emotion to go around: anger & pain from one lead in particular, general nostalgia & sadness for the loss of a friendship, & of course, the joy of a rekindling friendship/romance.

Lola was left at the altar by her fiancé & bestie Bright. Years later, the two are forced to reconnect at a holiday gathering. Along with the general pain/hurt/sadness their reconnection generates is the fact that Lola doesn’t want to tell her new friends about their past.

The romance in this one very much has overtones of the it was always you/it will always be you variety. Sure, there are other attractive people in the world & they could possibly find someone to be happy with, but no one will else will ever measure up to their BFF/lover. So once Lola gets past the hurt/anger, things start moving pretty quickly.

While I liked the romance & the band of secondary characters, I was bothered by Lola’s friendship with a second character. For some reason, it bugs me when characters are bad friends for most of a book, & this treatment of her new BFF just kept popping up.

Overall, this is a sweet second chance romance that gives warm & cozy vibes. Delilah Green is still my fave by this author but this is a good one to try if you’re craving some holiday verve!

4 ⭐️. Out 10/01.

This cheery, queery, seasonal, second-chance romance will help to make your season bright. Full of so much heart, music and spectacular characters that are written in such a magnificent way with such special details and a holiday playlist that pulls you into memories. A bi4bi holiday trip to snowy Colorado with their best friends at Christmas time brings two ex lovers together after 5 years, unknowingly being besties with sisters. A meddling, but meaning well mother signs their entire group of friends (including her 2 daughters) up for a week of queer matchmaking and holiday festivities. Charlotte and Brighton can pretend to be strangers, but their unresolved history and blatant attraction is undeniable. Steamy, steamy attraction!! Is forgiveness possible, or in some cases really what needs to happen? Can two childhood lovers learn to love again when snowed in together in a cabin during a storm? Strung together by this group of musicians, is phenomenally written cast of found family, humor, and the stress we all feel at some point during the month of December. I adored every single page of this book. I felt Charlotte's closed off shield and Brighton's refusal to pick up her guitar. This will be a holiday favorite for me, paired with twinkling Christmas lights and fancy holiday margaritas!

*Thank you to Berkley and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review and to PRH Audio for the gifted ALC*

I liked it, especially for a Christmas novel. Luckily here we weren't too too focused on the holiday and were more focused on rekindling the love between Charlotte and Brighton. A second-chance altar ditch? Hahaha YES. There were parts of that that didn't quite feel resolved, almost like an instalove of getting back together. I did enjoy all of the descriptions of music, maybe not the lyrics. I was almost more interested in Wes and Sloane's story, though it doesn't look like we'll get a sequel. Also the sex scenes were HOT, way hotter than Bright Falls.

But ultimately if you're looking for a Christmas book, this will make your reading bright!

I was so excited to see a new Ashley Herring Blake book coming out, even more so when I saw it was a holiday romance! Just like all of her other books I've read, this did not disappoint. Filled with the perfect amount of spice, angst, and humor, Make the Season Bright was a true treat to read! Can't wait for another!

Two exes, one snowy cabin and a whole lot of festive drama. Five years after being left at the altar, Charlotte is doing just fine. New York, her string quartet, and zero ex-drama—until Christmas. A holiday retreat in Colorado seems perfect, until Charlotte realises her ex-fiancée, Brighton, is crashing, too. With Christmas dating events, cookie decorating, and some unwelcome nostalgia, old sparks start flying. Can these exes survive Christmas without rekindling what they lost?

Happy holigays, indeed!

I’m a sucker for an atmospheric read and in Make the Season Bright—as with the Bright Falls series— Ashley Herring Blake delivers on all fronts. The holiday setting with all the staples you’d expect (cookie baking and decorating, snowy outdoor activities, and snow also being an extra character that causes trouble…and magic) brought all the cosy holiday vibes and added a magical layer to this second chance romance.

I quite enjoyed the pairing of a very Hallmark-esque setting with the realistic fallouts that come from a romantic relationship that ended in tears.

Trust that I personally would hold a grudge for the rest of my life if someone left me at the altar, but somehow, the author made this second chance romance work and, more importantly, convinced me that Charlotte and Brighton should give this thing another go. Second chance romances are notoriously hard to get right because you have to show both why the characters belonged to each other in the past even if it didn’t work out as well as why they should now, after hearts were broken and years of distance, try to reconcile. Blake excels at showing the unresolved emotions between Brighton and Charlotte that work particularly well with how opposite they both are. Charlotte’s more reserved and closed-off nature paired quite well with Brighton’s more extroverted, light-hearted personality.

What makes a great romance for me is when I can see the characters grow individually and this book delivers that as well. Brighton, who is determined to make things right and Charlotte, who is struggling with her anxiety and the way it impacts her life on a daily basis, undergo a lot of necessary growth before they can truly reconnect, which makes it so easy to root for them.

What I will say though is that I occasionally felt like conversations and characterisations cut off right before they could get deep enough and truly reveal something to the reader. That was especially the case with Charlotte for me. While we do learn that she is more closed off and scared of getting hurt again, I wanted the story to dive deeper into those feelings and what inspired them even before the whole leaving someone at the altar situation. Similarly, Brighton and Charlotte getting back together felt somewhat unresolved – instead of talking everything out, they give in to their desires which was definitely a good time (the spice was spicing, if you catch my drift) but left me wanting a little bit more relationship work.

Lastly, another highlight and as is a common pleasure with books by this author, Make the Season Bright features a diverse cast of kooky secondary characters that brings the found family trope to life. I always marvel at how Blake makes every character stand out so clearly even with limited page-time, but from band members to Sloane’s relatives, everyone just added a little something to the story that made it feel so much more well-rounded.

Cosy up this festive season with Make the Season Bright, a refreshing second chance sapphic romance that blends humour with heart and delivers all the festive shenanigans your heart could ever desire!

This book was amazing. It had the perfect level between angst and happy moments throughout the story. Make the Season Bright is a second chance holiday romance which was amazing!!!

Yes, it’s only October, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to get excited about the holidays! September to December is my absolute favourite time of year, and there’s something extra special about that lead up to Christmas for me. It just feels like the most magical time of the year, as Hallmarky as that sentiment may sound. Little wonder, then, that I am such a fan of the holiday themed romance novel. And to get one from Ashley Herring Blake, a writer whose work I have enjoyed immensely thus far? Yes please.

Make the Season Bright follows Charlotte and Brighton, exes who are forced to spend Christmas together in a small town after their own plans go awry, and their best friends — sisters, unbeknownst to either of them — invite them to come home and spend Christmas with their family. Throw in a week-long singles event designed to pair people up for festive activities and you have two ex-fiancées who have to confront their issues one way or another.

When it comes to second-chance romance, there are two things I’m particularly interested in: making sure we get enough of their history prior to the start of the book, and understanding the stakes of their breakup so it’s extra satisfying when they get back together. These options feel obvious, of course, but the execution of it can really make or break a book for me, and in the case of Make the Season Bright absolutely make it in my opinion. It was one of the few times where the “issue” to overcome didn’t seem like it could be overcome with a single conversation, but one that took work, and compromise. Not to mention the way Herring Blake puts emphasis on their friendships outside of the relationship, as those relationships were equally key in Charlotte and Brighton’s healing journies.

It might be a tad too early for Christmas just now (I wouldn’t know I’m literally listening to Christmas music as I write this) but Make the Season Bright is definitely not to be missed as the weather starts to turn colder.

Make the Season Bright is out now. Special thank you to Berkley for the advance copy for review purposes.

2.5 stars. I fully expected to love this one. I adored the Bright Falls series by this author, this cover is stunning, andddd it’s a Christmas/holiday, sapphic, second chance romance?! Fully expected to love it, second chance is one of my top tier tropes. But this just sadly didn’t wow me.

Charlotte was ditched at the altar by her fiancée five years ago, but her life in New York is grand and she is part of a strings ensemble! The holidays are coming up and one of her ensemble mates invites Charlotte and the rest of the quartet to spend Christmas with her family in Colorado. Charlotte arrives and runs into her ex Brighton, who is staying with her friend (the sister of Charlotte’s friend).

I just found these characters both so unlikeable and kinda annoying so it made it hard to get into their story. Like I legit didn’t even want them back together. It didn’t help that the plot was a bit of a bore as well. That said the author’s writing is solid, I’ll still read more from them in the future, this book and the characters just didn’t work for me.