I’m a simple person.

I love Christmas. The cheesy holiday offerings always get me. They bring me smiles and tears and then more smiles watching people celebrate the holidays.

I love romance. I love seeing characters grow throughout the story.

This book has everything I love and I was hooked reading Caroline and Arden’s story.
I have Christmas books and movies I watch ever year. This fits in perfectly with Home Alone and Eggnog and will be a great holiday reading tradition for years to come.

I LOVED this 🥺. Two of my favourite authors and a Christmas setting - I was so so excited. The story is wholesome and cute while also dealing with deeper themes. I really enjoyed the relationship the main character rekindled with her grandmother and also the relationship between her grandmother and the other character. Would highly recommend!

This story is literally the book version of ‘tis the damn season AND dorothea, but also lesbian and beautiful. It is seriously such a wonderful read and it carried so much within its pages.

I expected this book to feel like candy canes and jingle bells, but it actually felt like a fireplace that stays on while you drink hot chocolate quietly on Christmas morning. I have tears in my eyes as I write this review and my heart grew ten sizes. Even the Grinch would get teary-eyed at this, probably.

Rachael and Alyson always write compelling stories that not only make you smile, laugh, and kick your feet in the air, but also make you feel seen. And this was no exception.

I seriously think this book stands on its own outside of the holiday season simply because of the strong message it carries. It is a beautiful story about the place that makes your true self come alive and about the people that see you despite the walls you put up.

Arden and Caroline are beautifully fleshed-out together and separately, and it made me really happy to be able to experience this story from both of their POVs. I fully believed in the reasons they belonged together, as even the smallest of gestures showed me their connection.

I have so much more to say and so little words to say all of it. I don’t want to spoil any of it for you because this was too beautiful not to be experienced with fresh eyes. I will be rereading this upcoming December.

also, because it needs to keep being mentioned: the word lesbian is beautiful and this book never runs away from it !!!!!!!

thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for always pulling through for me and my silly YA sapphic romances.

and most importantly, thank you to Rachael Lippincott & Alyson Derrick for making me experience the young, uncomplicated sapphic romance I never got to experience as a teenager. As long as you keep writing these, I will personally keep making people read them. These stories deserve so badly to exist.

• hollywood actress arden returns to christmas-themed small town with a plan to fake date her ex-bff caroline in order to better her image to get a coveted role
• fake dating AND enemies-to-lovers AND ALSO KINDA friends-to-lovers!!!
• the miscommunication trope was HIGH on this one but it worked for me in this case. both characters had things to hide but it added layers to the story
• very very very low steam rip