Lovelight Farms by B. K. Borison Book Review

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Blurb

Where the lovelight gleams …

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, she enters a contest with instafamous influencer Evelyn St. James. With the added publicity and the $100,000 cash prize, she 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 the application and said she owns Lovelight Farms with her boyfriend. Only … there is no boyfriend.

Enter best friend Luka Peters. He just came home for some hot chocolate, and somehow got a farm and a serious girlfriend in the process.

Lovelight Farms is a romantic comedy featuring a handsome, freckled data analyst, a messy, optimistic Christmas tree farm owner, and a small town with the best hazelnut lattes on the east coast. This sweet and steamy romance is a holiday happily ever after.

It is the first book in a series of interconnected standalones following the three Lovelight owners.

Triggers

These are the the potentially sensitive topics that are discussed in this book:

Alcohol
Anxiety
Cancer (not Main Characters)
Death of a parent (both Main Characters)
Profanity
Sexually Explicit Scenes

Ratings

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There are possible **SPOILERS** beyond this point!

Overall Rating

3.5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This book is about Stella, who owns a Christmas tree farm that is facing financial ruin due to several unfortunate events. She enters a contest to win $100,000 and hopefully save her farm. On the contest application, she lies and says she runs the farm with her boyfriend. Enter Luka, her best friend of 9 years, who happily agrees to fake date her to help save her farm. This book is very sweet and I liked Luka and Stella’s relationship. They are both very kind and compassionate people with natural chemistry together. I will say that this is a holiday book and not really a Christmas book because I don’t think we even see them during Christmas… We do see them for Thanksgiving and Halloween, if you’re keeping track!

Borison has a lot of yummy, whimsical winter imagery in this book that I really enjoyed. The settings she painted about what the farm looked like with fresh snow and different activities she had there was also enjoyable. I felt like there was just the right amount of world building as far as that goes!

The food imagery was not at all for me. Just a personal preference thing! I’m not a fan of greasy pizza and hazelnut lattes. There is more food than those two things, as it is 1/6 of what’s discussed in each chapter. The passages about the food they ate felt really long and just seemed excessive to me.

Though this is not technically a miscommunication trope, this book is propelled by the lies Stella and Luka tell to each other for over nine years. They both withhold their feelings for no apparent reason. They go through all the motions of being life partners without actually committing to one another. Stella and Luka date/sleep with other people knowing it will hurt—essentially using these other people for only sex. It didn’t sit right with me.

From the beginning, it’s clear that Luka and Stella are definitely in a relationship closer to dating than friendship. Lovelight Farms seems to be telling more of the story of how everyone knows that as well, outside of Stella, than what fake dating is like between them. Nothing really changes in their dynamic besides adding sex. No big climax… Everything was really okay the whole time. The problems of the book weren’t really a problem in the end at all. Just anxiety from Stella, which my GAD did not like. There is a mystery sort of aspect to this book but it felt very flat for me. I didn’t dislike this book but I probably won’t read another of these “everyone knows but her” books, for a while. It definitely needs to be paired with some other real storyline to work IMO. I don’t think that was the case here with the Social Media Competition. It really felt like that contest is just a set up for the next book in this series. I’m not really intrigued to know more about Evelyn or Beckett after reading this one. This book was cute though! There were lots of quotable things said but I wouldn’t reread it.

Spice Rating

2/5 🌶🌶

This book is rather wholesome until the end and bonus chapters Borison includes. They aren’t all open door though.

Genre & Tropes

Genre

Romantic Comedy

Tropes

Found Family
Slow burn
Friends to Lovers
Everyone Knows But Her Romance

Favorite Quotes

“Can you have a hangover from bad decisions? It seems likely.”

“It’s a heady feeling, to know that I’m not the only one who wants to possess every moment of happiness. Collect every laugh and pocket it, hoard them like tiny treasures.”

“It’s hard to love someone without restraint. To give yourself over to the swell and pull of it without fear of what might happen. I think it’s only natural to hold a part of yourself back and protect what you can.”