I love Christmas books and I really had high hopes for this one. The book was okay, however it did have a lot of religious references within the book. This may be okay for those who follow a certain faith however for others this could be an issue.
The story is told with a dual pov, however I felt that the plot wasn’t really executed properly and that there was a lot going on within the book.
The book was cute in parts however I felt that the characters lacked any chemistry between them and also there seem to be a lot of characters for the book.
I rated this book 2.5 stars.

Thank you for the chance to eARC Holly and Nick Hate Christmas!

I really wanted to love this one. Christmas romances are my favorite and I was hoping for an almost Hallmark Movie type of feeling, but it fell very flat for me.

I want to start by discussing the heavy references to religion. I understand this is a Christmas time based novel, but there were enough moments where Christianity, praying, and religious values were mentioned that I do think this should also be qualified as Christian fiction. Holly's big, "I don't want to feel this way any more" moment happens with the story of Jesus's being born in the manger in the background, the nativity is brought up a couple times, references to praying for answers, and even a moment between Thomas and Nick where Thomas is telling Nick about the importance of being a ministry to misguided teens and children happens. I was.. very unprepared for this and I do think it is something that needs to be considered for any readers picking it up. If you love books with religious idealogy, you'll like this. If you don't, you might want to stay away.

My second problem with this book is Nick's goal of opening a camp/ranch for troubled children and teens feels very out of touch with every thing coming out about this camps in real life. I could not shake that ick.

Even if I had, the romance in this felt like a firework that never sets off and you have to live with being told what it was supposed to do instead of seeing it. The attraction between Holly and Nick is clearly there, but nothing comes from thay fizzle that we as readers genuinely get to hold on to to validate them ending up together in the end. I feel like we were told Holly and Nick were suddenly in love, not shown. And we don't even get to that until well into the book.

There were so many subplots (sick parents mystery, the ranch mystery, Holly's job, her sisters, her brother) that I feel the ability to truly set up a romance between Nick and Holly suffered. There were also far too many attempted twists and gotchas causing that final grand gesture to fall so flat.

There's just a lot going on here that really made this book not for me.

Holly and Nick Hate Christmas is a romance fictional novel. It has the romance and comedy, but it also has a lot of religious references in it. It starts off two weeks before Christmas and doesn’t get to Christmas day until about 90% into the book. I feel like the characters lacked depth and the ending was not well executed. I did not feel the chemistry between the two main characters. Even though this book was not what I was expecting, I still found it to be a reasonable read.

This is a Holiday romance book that centers around a woman named Holly. She doesn’t like Christmas because she was born a Christmas baby and her Parents named her Holly, out of all the names in the world. Holly’s Brother tries to set up Holly with his best friend named Nick. At first it starts to backfire on her brother, but then these two don’t stay enemies for long! As the story starts to unravel, they end up having feelings for one another. The story then jumps two years into the future, and we get to see how everything played out. This is a heartwarming Christmas novel filled with family secrets. Overall, I rate this a 3 out of 5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley, author Betsy St. Amant and WaterBrook & Multnomah publishing for this digital advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book is set to be published on September 16, 2025!

I thought the premise was cute, but there were too many things that made this book a dud for me:

1. There were weird moments of religion thrown in. I get it’s Christmas, but as someone who isn’t religious at all I would have wanted this somehow expressed in the synopsis. It threw me off a bit.
2. The pranks weren’t even that funny. I wanted a bit more action. Something that would make me laugh. It’s okay if it’s unbelievable since this is fiction, but the pranks were just eh.
3. There were too many characters! I don’t even know how many sisters, nephews, and boyfriends were floating around that house. It made it hard to concentrate on the plot since the whole time I was like “ok, now who is this again?”
4. The characters were flat. They literally had no life to them. I’m not sure if there was a book before this one that explained more, but I had so many questions: why does Nick want a therapy farm? How did he get in touch with the Sinclair about buying the land? Should we have a deeper connection with Ryan and Lydia? Even our main characters didn’t give me a reason to cheer for them because they were two dimensional.
5. The chemistry was severely lacking. I didn’t believe it, but character development could help.

I really wanted more from this book. As a December baby I know what it is like for family and friends to either forget my birthday or just lump it in with Christmas. Not fair. I also liked the synopsis and wanted the book to center on that rather than the current craziness.

I would say this is still an interesting Christmas read.

*_An ARC was received in exchange for an honest review.

Not yucking someone’s yum but I didn’t realize that this book was kinda religious focused. Don’t have an issue with it but I do wish that religion was tagged somewhere. Other than that, it was a good book but something in the story was missing.

Right off the bat I want to say that this book mentioned god/ministries/missionaries - it wasn’t a lot but it was in there and it threw me off and turned me off a bit. Nothing against it but just not for me - I wish this was mentioned in the description or somewhere. The story line was good but I felt like it wasn’t executed properly and there was lack of feelings and emotions involved. It was just an okay book for me, 2.5 rounded up to 3 for me.

It was a dual point of view story but I wish it was more clear when it switched. There’s just something missing from the book and it wasn’t for me.

I just finished such a fun book. Holly and Nick Hate Christmas by Betsy St. Amant comes out this fall. Don’t skip this one.

This should’ve been also listed under Christian fiction and if it was I honestly wouldn’t have requested it. There’s too much emphasis on praying for my liking.