Christmas with the Lords by Hannah Langdon

 

4*

Sweet friends-to-lovers, grumpy/sunshine, small town romance set in the English countryside of Dorset.

After being cruelly dumped by her boyfriend of 10 years and, at 38, facing the prospect of never fulfilling her dream of a husband and children, primary school teacher Penny decides to spend the Christmas holiday taking care of four-year-old twins. Shortly after she arrives, she meets their Uncle Lando, a handsome, grumpy, troubled man who spends his days whittling a nativity set in his studio. Like Penny, he’s running from a life that he thought was what he wanted, but turned out to be soul-destroying. They both have plans to leave what’s familiar and to escape, Penny to an international school position in India and Lando to a secluded cottage in Greece. However, as feelings start to grow and their arrogant, awful exes try to rekindle relationships for selfish reasons, these two insecure but kind souls have to decide if running away will really solve their problems or if they’re willing to risk following their hearts.

Despite the baggage they’re both carrying, Langdon doesn’t allow it to drag down the story. The antics of the eccentric Lord family are funny and endearing, the twins are adorable, and everyone from grandfather William to the twin’s mom Bunny to the surly but caring cook Pilar open their arms and hearts to Penny. If you’re looking for a heartwarming Christmas story that includes chosen family, a quaint English village, and a mature, slow burn romance, this is it!

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Storm Publishing through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Faking Christmas by Kerry Winfrey

 

4*

Laurel Grant has always struggled to find her passion and her place in the world. She also has an unfortunate habit of engaging in workplace romances which invariably go bad, the most recent of which left her homeless and jobless. So when her best friend suggests she apply for a social media position at Buckeye State of Mind, an Ohio magazine and website, she gives it a shot and is offered the job. The only hitch? Her new boss Gilbert, who she’s at no risk of falling for, thinks she’s a successful farmer thanks to the Meadow Rise Farm Instagram account she moderates for her twin sister Holly and her husband Darius. Fearful that the job offer will be rescinded if she sets him straight, she keeps up the ruse by writing a monthly column highlighting her life on the farm as a fabulous cook, custom furniture maker, and goat tender. So when Gilbert invites himself for their traditional Christmas Eve Eve dinner, she conspires with Holly to switch places, complete with playing Mom to her niece and nephew. How hard could it be to pull off?

Turns out it’s a lot harder than Laurel thinks when her nemesis, Max Beckett, shows up at Holly’s invitation to play her husband. When a blizzard turns an evening’s dinner into a weekend gathering, it’ll take a Christmas miracle to pull it off, especially since she’s hated Max ever since Holly’s wedding when she overheard him trying to convince Darius to call it off. Is it possible that she’s misjudged the grumpy, Christmas-hating killjoy who’s doing his best to help her fool her boss since she has no clue how to cook or milk a goat or why she suddenly finds herself fighting an attraction?

This sweet slow-burn, enemies to lovers, grumpy/sunshine, forced proximity, fake relationship Christmas romance is the perfect recipe for a holiday treat. Combining plot elements from the classic movie Christmas in Connecticut with The Parent Trap, blended together with favorite Christmas songs and movies, Winfrey offers up a great escape for readers looking for a heaping helping of holiday cheer. 

I received an ARC from Berkley Books through NetGalley for an honest review. Opinions are strictly my own.

Good Girl Complex by Elle Kennedy

4*

Lovely new adult romance between star-crossed lovers…the townie bad boy and the rich girl. The relationship between Mac and Cooper starts with a lie, an act of revenge that puts Mac in the middle. Her long-time boyfriend, Preston, is the stereotypical rich asshole who uses his daddy’s money to threaten and try to destroy people he feels are trash (which is everyone outside his wealthy circle). Like the real-life rapist Brock Turner, he tries to force himself on a friend of Cooper’s and when Coop defends her, Preston has him fired. The best and only way to get back at him is through the girlfriend. No surprise that what starts out as a revenge plot turns into much more. Of course, as these things go, he’s bound to get caught in his lies. The question is whether or not Mac is the forgiving kind.

Although it’s a familiar trope, the complexities of their lives, including a negligent childhood lacking in love, and their drive to prove themselves despite their parenting elevate this book. Kennedy has written a story that plumbs emotional depths and gets to the heart of what it means for two young people to break from the constraints imposed by falling in line with the expectations society has formed based on their parents’ selfish choices. In the case of Mac and Cooper, they really see each other and, with each other’s support and encouragement, gain the clarity and courage to break from these restraints to pursue their goals and dreams. Highly recommended.

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from St. Martin’s Griffin through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

This is for Tonight by Jessica Patrick

5*

Crafting YouTuber Andi needs money to go to SCU (presumably the fictional USC) with her twin brother, the same school where her parents met. Unfortunately, she doesn’t win the scholarship and can’t afford the tuition since they’re still paying off her father’s medical bills 5 years after his death. (Universal healthcare, anyone?) So they come up with the idea of filming a video at the Cabazon Music Festival (Coachella in disguise) in the hopes it’ll go viral and raise the funds she needs. The problem is that she’ll have to change her vlogger focus if she wants the money to keep rolling in.Jay Bankar has a hugely-successful YouTube channel that features him pranking people and being an all-around jerk and misogynist. When he and Andi meet the first night of the festival when he offers to help her set up her tent, the chemistry is instantaneous, that is, until she gets a good look at him in the light of the following day. She struggles to reconcile the nice guy with the vlogger she hates with a passion. As they begin to compete with each other in a scavenger hunt with the prize of interviewing the headliner band, one of the hottest in the country, she sees traces of that sweet guy hiding behind his sarcastic online persona. Can she believe him when he says it’s all an act, one designed to raise his own college funds? Is he worthy of her forgiveness after he disappoints her more than once, especially when she thinks about her father’s policy of “no second chances”?

Patrick’s debut novel will appeal to her internet-savvy, social media-obsessed teen audience. In addition to its enemies-to-lovers theme, it also explores sometimes rocky sibling relationships, the lingering grief of losing a parent, and the stress caused by a lack of funds which sometimes causes people to make questionable decisions, all set against the backdrop of a music festival. If you have teen patrons looking for a fun summer read, hand them this book. Highly recommended.

I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Swoon Reads through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Grace After Henry by Eithne Shortall

Spoiler alert:




Grace and Henry’s happily ever after comes to an abrupt end when he is gruesomely killed in a biking accident on his way to an open house. In the weeks following his death, Grace keeps thinking she sees Henry around Dublin until the day a plumber comes to her door who is his spitting image. Andy has come in search of his birth mother only to find that both she and the identical twin he knew nothing about have died. An unorthodox relationship builds between the two as Grace’s grief process is stalled by this Henry substitute and Andy’s search for his past morphs into a chance to create an “alternate life” from the ashes of his brother’s. As Grace says, Andy “was a bridge between the life I had chosen and the one fate had given me.”

In a less talented author, this book could have been very maudlin and tragic. Instead, Shortall has gifted us with a heartwarming and captivating story which balances heart-breaking grief with a big dose of the humor the Irish are famous for. As Grace struggles to keep her grief from consuming her, she has the support of a stellar group of secondary characters who provide ample comic relief. There are the Three Wise Men at the cemetery who share her experience of having lost their partners and create a safe haven with their sage advice and tired jokes; irascible next-door neighbor Betty who has a deeply-camouflaged warm heart but provides a welcome distraction from lonely nights; best friend Aoife who drags her back into the land of the living; boss Dermot who hates his restaurant customers and refuses to give up his dream of acting; and her sweet and loving parents with their fancy date night at Nando’s and moth extermination attempts. There are also several memories of conversations Grace had with Henry full of bickering, teasing, joking and love that are a bittersweet reminder of all she has lost.

Despite the humor, Shortall doesn’t shy away from exposing Ireland’s tragic history of forced adoptions. As Andy uncovers details of his past, we see the devastation this practice wrought on generations of young Catholic women and the children taken from them. Grief comes in many forms, and late in the book Grace realizes that hers might not have been as great as Henry’s parents and that Andy has also suffered a huge loss by being separated from his twin and denied the opportunity to be raised as part of a loving family because he was considered “unexpected, surplus”.

It’s a tribute to an author when the reader wants to be a part of the characters’ lives. Laughing along with Grace’s parents and spending time with her friends makes me want to move to Dublin yesterday. This beautiful book would appeal to fans of Maeve Binchy and Cecelia Ahern. The only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars is because I wasn’t happy with the ending and would love a sequel. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath.


I received a complimentary ARC of this book from G.P Putnam’s Sons through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed are completely my own.