Synopsis:
Two best friends fake date to reach their holiday happily ever after in this first romantic comedy in the Lovelight series.
A pasture of dead trees. A hostile takeover of the Santa barn by a family of raccoons. And shipments that have mysteriously gone missing. Lovelight Farms is not the magical winter wonderland of Stella Bloom’s dreams.
In an effort to save the Christmas tree farm she’s loved since she was a kid, Stella enters a contest with Instagram-famous influencer Evelyn St. James. With the added publicity and the $100,000 cash prize, Stella might just be able to save the farm from its financial woes. There’s just one problem. To make the farm seem like a romantic destination for the holidays, she lied on her application and said she owns Lovelight Farms with her boyfriend. Only…there is no boyfriend.
Enter best friend Luka Peters. He just stopped by for some hot chocolate and somehow got a farm and a serious girlfriend in the process. But fake dating his best friend might be the best Christmas present he’s ever received.
Review:
Lovelight Farms has been on my radar for years and years and I’m glad I finally got around to reading it. However, I can’t lie to you all. I finished reading this book 16 days ago (at the time of writing this review) and I’ve read seven books since then so I’ve forgotten everything I wanted to talk about in this review. I did make some notes, but I’ve found when I’m enjoying books I don’t stop to take notes very often. So enjoy this (potentially) short review!
I’ve become a big fan of festive books set on Christmas tree farms. This is the fourth one I’ve read (I think) and they’re such lovely settings for Christmas books. They always seem to be failing businesses though. I’d like the next one I read to be a booming business with absolutely no conflict whatsoever.
If I had a pound for every book I’ve read this year that involved a character called Stella considering using an escort service, I’d have two pounds, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. They were also almost back to back reads.
Something else I can’t lie about in this review, I found Lovelight Farms to be a really slow read. Based on how fast I read, it shouldn’t take me a week to read a 350 page book. Unfortunately, the first half of this book was a bit slow to get going. The whole point of Stella and Luka fake dating was because the influencer was coming to see the farm. They don’t turn up until over 60% through and by then it already doesn’t feel like they’re faking it. They’re basically in a real relationship at that point so there wasn’t really much need to tell anyone it was all a lie. Anyway, I don’t want to give too much away as this is the whole point of the book, but it did seem like a weird choice.
The fact that Stella was constantly trying to sabotage their relationship was extremely frustrating. Luka outright said that they would continue acting the way they were (in a relationship) to see where it took them. To me it seemed a little obvious that he has romantic feelings for her. Plus he was a little too good at pretending to be her boyfriend, surely that would raise some suspicions about how he felt.
They were very cute together though. I’m glad you had their long history to back up why you should be rooting for them to finally sort themselves out. Their connection ran very deep and honestly, their backgrounds and history was fairly complex.
There’s a little bit of spice in this book, but it doesn’t detract from the plot if that’s something you’re not a fan of. Overall, I’d say it’s more fluff than smut and you could easily skip over any spicy scenes.
I don’t know anything about the rest of the Lovelight Farms series, but I’m hoping Beckett has his own book. It’s not one I’ll be checking out in the near future as my TBR is longer than my arm, but I’m definitely interested in his story. Especially if it’s about a certain situation you learn about in this book. Plus, who doesn’t want more cute kittens in their lives?
I’d say Lovelight Farms was an extremely enjoyable read (once I got past how slow I was reading it) and it’s worth the hype but it’s by no means a five star read – which seems to be a common rating for this book.
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