Author: Sarah Estep
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Rating: 5⭐
Book Links: Goodreads | Amazon
My initial thoughts:
This is what I'm looking for in a holiday romance.😍
The Vibe:
Holiday romance, Small town, childhood neighbors to lovers
My Review:
A holiday romance that goes down for the books!!
First of all, all of the 90s movie references in this story had me smiling for days. So many of them are movies I still love and watch to this day, and that alone immediately set the nostalgic, cozy vibe of this story.
This story opens with Ivy returning home for Christmas after years of keeping her distance, and what starts as a holiday visit quickly becomes a lot more emotional than she expected.
Ivy has harbored feelings for Austin..the literal heartthrob next door neighbor since they were teenagers. As an adult, those feelings don’t necessarily go away… but she does eventually start seeing him in a different light. All thanks to his brother, Grant.
Meanwhile, Grant has been secretly pining over Ivy for years, all while watching her fawn over Austin. It takes him some time to finally get there, but when he does start acting on those feelings… the more we learned about just how long and how deeply Grant had cared for Ivy, the more I absolutely melted. 🥹
This one comes packed with all the feels… from smiling at the sweet moments, laughing out loud at the funny ones, yelling at both Ivy and Grant when they were taking too long to get there, and melting over Grant because he is what book boyfriends are made of. 💗
The Christmas atmosphere was exactly what I expect from a holiday romance. It genuinely felt like Christmas without the holiday setting overpowering the actual story.
This is what I long for in a holiday romance!! 🥰
5⭐
Thank you to Entangled Publishing and NetGalley for providing this arc in exchange for my honest review
Synopsis:
Ivy Weaver learned the hard way that some confessions are better left unsaid―like the one meant for her longtime crush, Austin, that was accidentally delivered to his older brother, Grant, instead. His brutal reaction made leaving town easy. Staying away for ten years? Even easier.
Until now.
When Ivy’s parents announce they’re leaving Coeur-de-Lac for good, Ivy can’t avoid the inevitable. She’ll return just long enough to celebrate the Christmas season while packing up her parents’ house, and her past, for good.
Grant Underwood has spent his life doing exactly what was expected of him―taking over the family business, keeping everything running smoothly, never making the same mistake twice. But when Ivy comes back to town, he sees a second chance he didn’t think he’d get.
The problem? Ivy has spent the past decade thinking she was in love with the wrong brother.
Between a chaotic family holiday, Austin’s sudden interest in Ivy, and one extremely mischievous orange cat, Grant is running out of time before the Christmas season ends and he loses his chance to prove the boy Ivy once loved isn’t the man she was meant to end up with.
It’s going to take more than mistletoe to seal this love story with a kiss.
