This is the third romance I’ve read in a row where the chemistry wasn’t all that apparent to me, so I don’t know, maybe it’s me, I have been reading this genre for a long time so maybe I’m a little burnt out on it or something? No matter how many times or ways the author tried to tell me Gwen and Ian were attracted to one another, it just seemed kind of forced and I never felt that spark.

I usually like additional family members in a romance, I had no problem with the amount Gwen’s sons were in the story or even that the story occasionally (briefly) is told from their point of view, too often though they didn’t seem like six year olds, I mean, many of their actions did, but some of their thoughts and some of their words seemed advanced for their age and that tended to pull me out of the book any time I noticed it.

I know this is a holiday romance and most readers will pick it up for that light, fluffy feeling, I just sort of found myself struggling with the lack of struggle here. Aside from the boys occasionally mentioning their dead father and his absent parents, for the most part, everything here was so so easy, you see very little of the hardest parts of the mom’s Alzheimer’s like frustration and anger and absolute heartbreak, nor does this delve into the potential complications of her living with six year olds, or how financially difficult it might be for a Christmas tree farmer to afford care. And, who on earth would be caught up in noticing someone’s physical attractiveness when most of their belongings, including a tool essential to their side gig is underwater? I guess for me, if a book introduces elements that would be extremely challenging and overwhelming in real life, then I need them to be at least halfway as challenging and overwhelming for the characters in the book, and that wasn’t generally the case here.

The slight sugarcoating on the difficult subjects in this book does make this a fit for those who prefer lighter fair for the holidays, and the one strong recommendation I have for this one is that this isn’t one of those books with Christmas in the title and on the cover only to come up short in the pages, there is plenty of festive content throughout, so I did appreciate that. ( )