*eARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

i really enjoyed this! despite reading it in july, i got really into it - the characters were the real strength of this. i grew to love haf and was really rooting for her, and the side characters were equally strong. ambrose has my whole heart and i adored how there was casual disabled/nonbinary/fat rep that felt authentic and not tokenistic. also got quite emotional reading the author's note that mentioned how haf was intended to be written with undiagnosed autism/dyspraxia, and i really related to haf's confusion about her place in the world (this is not explicitly discussed on page, reflecting the author's experience of living as an undiagnosed adult). also loved how it was a very hallmark-y romance but set in the UK, so i was able to relate to the Christmas traditions more than i normally can in the hallmark christmas romances i love and actually feel seen as a queer person in the traditional family Christmas environment. also there were a lot of great references to contemporary pop culture that made the characters feel more relatable in their speech.
what detracts from this being a 5 star read for me is that the last quarter is quite chaotic - the writing style is very compelling and i couldn't put it down but this meant everything was happening very quickly and while i liked how the characters developed emotionally and how the story resolved by the end, i felt like this conclusion and development was a bit rushed.