Romance for Christmas

Lovelight Farms, B.K. Borison

Stella Bloom had a bleak childhood; daughter of a philandering husband, her mother never recovered from being abandoned by her lover; subsequently she grew up learning not to count on people who might abandon you. When her mother died, she accidentally met Luka Peters, a statistician. Luka becomes her best friend, supporting her dreams when she bought a local Christmas tree farm, the one place where she was truly happy. But due to recent setbacks, she's afraid she might lose the farm and is afraid to tell her employees. Instead, she concocts a plan to win a prize with an internet influencer to fund the farm further.

Unfortunately, she told the influencer she and her boyfriend ran the farm. So she asks Luka to be her "temporary boyfriend."

You guessed it, these two "best friends" have been in love all during their ten-year friendship. Luka seems amenable to admitting it, but due to her trust issues Stella thinks its better to leave the status at quo.

This is a sweet Hallmark-type romance taking place in a very accepting small town (no one cares, for example, that the sheriff is hoping to be in a same-sex relationship) and Luka is a very appealing lead male character—he even cooks, and his Italian mom, who appears all too briefly, is a hoot. Stella, however seems to be a perpetual child, frightened of any commitment fearing her life will end up like her mother's (one actually wants to bonk her mom for basically allowing Stella's deadbeat dad to ruin her life). Basically the story is 300 pages of their yearning for each other.

Some good things: the farm manager, Beckett, is a hoot: a tough guy who's a sucker for kittens. Lovelight Farms' Christmas sounds like a dream. No one likes Stella's deadbeat dad. Some bad things: there's yet another best-friend-is-a-dreamy-baker (both in her looks and her baking). The yearning goes on so, so, so long.

The sex scenes are pretty good. A nice Christmas story if you don't expect much.