You Make It Feel Like Christmas by Sophie Sullivan

You Make It Feel Like Christmas by Sophie Sullivan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
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Maisie Smart doesn’t look back. Not on the choice she made to be a photographer, and not on the one-night stand she had six months ago. But sleeping with a professional hockey player who bolted the morning after is a whole new level of embarrassing. Now she’s about to spend the week at Tickle Tree Farms with her family this Christmas—and then the universe throws a Grinch in her festive plans.

Nick King is a mess. After a significant injury benches him, he has more time to dwell on his anxieties and the one-night stand he can’t get out of his head. With the holidays around the corner, he figures visiting his sister and nephew at their Christmas tree farm will be a good way to sort himself out. That’s impossible when he learns Maisie is there, still beautiful and justifiably angry about the way he left. But Christmas is the time for second chances, and the forced proximity may help Nick and Maisie unwrap feelings neither of them can walk away from twice.
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It felt a little wild to be reading this Christmas romance on a day when the high temperature topped out in the low 80s, but here we are. I am happily transitioning out of the summer months, and this was a great choice to get me excited about what the upcoming cooler months have to offer. This is a follow-up to Sullivan's 2024 autumn romance Can't Help Falling in Love, which I have not read, but it was easily read as a standalone. However, now that I have met Lexi and Will, the main characters from that one, I may have to go back and read their story. I would also love to see this series continue.

Anyway, what is there to say about a Christmas hockey romance? I don't read a lot of hockey romances, and hockey was a minor character in this one, which was fine with me. I enjoy sports romances, but I don't want the sports to take center stage. I have read other reviews that took offense at the "foul" language in the book, but I didn't really find it to be bad at all. Were there a few well-placed F-bombs? Sure. Were they egregious? No. There were love scenes, but they were not overly graphic. I am a smut-skipper and was easily able to page through them without losing out on the story.

The supporting characters were so well-developed and really added to the story. I loved that about this book. I really enjoyed Maisie and Nick, but I also loved that I loved the people surrounding Maisie and Nick. While a romance novel of this type is always going to be a little predictable (and that is fine with me), this one had enough depth that I was happy to keep reading. I appreciated that it tackled a couple of more serious subjects, and I loved rooting for Maisie and Nick as they made their way to their HEA.

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