Season of Love

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Greer, Helena
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Greer, Helena	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Includes a reading group guide.
"A witty, glittering rom-com about finding the courage to face your past and learning what it truly means to return home, perfect for fans of Jenny Bayliss and Alexandra Bellefleur. Artist Miriam Blum has her decoupaged glitter ducks perfectly lined up. Only for one phone call to bring her whole life all crashing down. Her beloved and eccentric great-aunt has just died-leaving her part-owner of the only Jewish-owned Christmas tree farm in the country. Facing the family Miriam abandoned terrifies her. But facing the farm's unbelievably sexy zaftig manager is another complication entirely... Noelle Northwood is horrified that the first woman she's been attracted to in years is the same careless virago whose absence devastated the people Noelle considers family. She hates, even more, the thought of working alongside Miriam to save Carrigan's Christmas Tree Farmland. Only Miriam decides to give working at the farm a trial run, and Noelle must find a way to keep the peace-and their undeniable chemistry at bay. At least until the end of the holiday season. But when the ghosts of the past endanger the farmland, both Miriam and Noelle will need to put aside their misconceptions... and discover if what they've been looking for has been right in front of them all along"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A Solid Sapphic Holiday Romance submitted by Meginator on June 24, 2023, 9:50pm Content Note: This book includes a portrayal of an emotionally and financially abusive family relationship; it isn’t the main focus, but it becomes increasingly important over the course of the story.

Despite dealing with some serious themes about rebuilding yourself after experiencing trauma, this is a generally lighthearted holiday romance about finding your home and your community in your mid-thirties (although the characters often read much younger to me). The primary plot follows a familiar “save the small business” arc, with one of the protagonists returning to the place she spent much of her youth and encountering some resistance from a more recent arrival who knows her only by her reputation and who questions her motives and dedication to the cause; the holiday-adjacent wrinkle comes from the fact that the business is a Christmas tree farm owned and operated by a Jewish family, and the book takes place during the fall and early winter months. While both of the main love interests share the narration, the book seems to favor Miriam’s point of view; Noelle is an engaging character in her own right, but the book consistently prioritizes Miriam’s emotional journey, and it feels at times more like her story than like their shared one. Because Miriam’s story has so much depth to it, this slight lopsidedness generally does not detract from the novel and it is less distracting than the painfully obvious sequel seeds scattered throughout the book, which do little to affect the current storyline except to telegraph the author’s future intentions. Despite some structural flaws, such as a clumsily executed stumbling block just before the finale and a supporting cast that is a little too conveniently supportive, the story is engaging and excellently balances serious emotional subjects with the expected rom-com levity. Greer doesn’t stray too far from familiar plot beats, but that helps offset the impact of the book’s darker emotional elements, allowing her to engage seriously with the lingering impact of emotional abuse within a more lighthearted genre. This is an excellent, though imperfect, sapphic holiday romance that stands out from the pack with the depth of its characterization and its ability to spin familiar tropes into a compelling story.

Wanted to Like It submitted by Maria Maguire on July 8, 2023, 10:11pm I really wanted to like this book, and it seemed right up my alley! But I just wasn't that invested in the main characters for some reason.