Book Review: A Curse for Christmas Past by Morgan Lockhart
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — A little Christmas magic, a troublesome curse & a romance worth believing in.
Review Date: September 15, 2026 | Release Date: September 22, 2026
A Curse for Christmas Past by Morgan Lockhart is the kind of holiday romance that takes everything I love about Christmas coziness and adds a little witchy chaos, a little mystery, and a whole lot of magic.
Hayleigh Gray is having what can only be described as a spectacular run of bad luck. Job? Gone. Savings? Not looking great. Relationship? Over. But when something happens to her beloved horse, she starts to wonder if all of this is more than just terrible luck. Turns out, Hayleigh is cursed—and finding a way to break it sends her straight to Elk Ridge, Washington, a small town full of Christmas festivities, witches, and one very intriguing man.
Stephan Midwinter was such a fun romantic lead. He’s an artist, an animal rescuer, a witch, and exactly the kind of person Hayleigh probably shouldn’t be drawn to considering how wary she is of magic. Their dynamic worked so well because the romance isn’t simply about attraction; Stephan represents a life completely different from the one Hayleigh thought she was supposed to want.
I especially loved the combination of romance and magical mystery. There are ancestral secrets to uncover, a curse with a rapidly approaching Christmas deadline, mischievous holiday spirits, and plenty of magical shenanigans along the way. And then there is the kitschy holiday train B&B. Being snowed in there together? Absolutely ridiculous in the very best Christmas-romance way.
Underneath all of the holiday fun, though, there’s a lovely story about questioning the expectations we’ve inherited and deciding which ones actually deserve a place in our lives. Hayleigh has to figure out whether holding onto what is familiar is really worth sacrificing something unexpected that could make her happy. That gave the story a little more emotional depth beneath all the Christmas sparkle.
Cozy, romantic, magical, and wonderfully festive, A Curse for Christmas Past feels like a Hallmark Christmas movie wandered into a witchy little town and someone cast a spell on it. If Christmas festivals, small-town witches, forced proximity, magical mysteries, and holiday romance sound like your kind of seasonal reading, put this one on your holiday TBR.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Book Review: Scouting the Single Dad by Sara Ney
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — A swoony single-dad sports romance with grumpy/sunshine chemistry and one tiny matchmaker.
Review Date: September 15, 2026 | Release Date: September 22, 2026
Sara Ney delivers an adorable mix of sports romance, single-dad swoon, small-town charm, and one very determined nine-year-old matchmaker in Scouting the Single Dad.
Layla Monroe is the kind of heroine who can handle just about anything thrown her way—youth soccer chaos, runaway ferrets, and all the other unexpected disasters that come with small-town life. But when Fall Fest is facing the ultimate catastrophe of practically nonexistent ticket sales, she needs a miracle.
Enter Hayes Fielder.
Grumpy NFL player. Reluctant festival attraction. Single dad. And definitely not interested in becoming part of Layla’s increasingly complicated life.
At least, that’s the plan.
Because Hayes doesn’t arrive alone. His nine-year-old daughter comes armed with an agenda of her own, and somewhere between hiking, swimming, festival festivities, and finding her dad a girlfriend, she decides Layla might be exactly what they both need.
I loved the contrast between Layla’s warm, sunny personality and Hayes’s more guarded nature. Their chemistry builds gradually, making all those little moments—the teasing, the reluctant smiles, the growing attraction—feel even sweeter. And once that slow burn finally starts burning? 🔥
But what really makes this romance work is that it isn’t only about Hayes and Layla falling for each other. There’s an irresistible little family dynamic developing alongside the romance, and Hayes’s daughter absolutely steals scenes with her matchmaking schemes. Watching Hayes slowly realize that what started as a simple favor might be turning into something he doesn’t want to walk away from gives the story so much heart.
I also loved the shift from cozy Star Lake to Arizona. It allows their relationship to move outside the festival bubble and gives us a glimpse of what being together could actually look like. Pool kisses, kitchen disasters, family moments, and a meddling kid who has absolutely no intention of letting her dad ruin this? Yes, please.
Scouting the Single Dad is lighthearted, flirty, warm, and wonderfully easy to fall into. It’s the kind of romance that gives you plenty of laughs while still delivering those soft, swoony moments that make single-dad romances so much fun.
Come for the grumpy NFL player.
Stay for the tiny matchmaker who’s already planned his happily ever after.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Book Review: So It Grows by Andie Burke
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — Enemies, neighbors, reluctant allies…and eventually something worth putting down roots for.
Review Date: September 15, 2026 | Release Date: September 22, 2026
There is something about a romance where two people spend a significant amount of time insisting they absolutely cannot stand each other that immediately has my attention. Add in a quirky plant shop, a mac-and-cheese restaurant, small-business drama, and two people carrying more emotional baggage than either wants to admit, and So It Grows had all the ingredients for a romance I wanted to sink into.
Felicity Gallagher is desperately trying to hold on to the fresh start she found after inheriting her aunt’s plant shop. It’s more than a business to her—it represents stability, possibility, and a chance to rebuild after a truly awful year. Unfortunately, her increasingly popular neighbor Nic and his restaurant keep making her carefully constructed little world a whole lot more complicated.
And Nic? He is exactly the kind of romance hero who is incredibly fun to watch slowly work his way under a heroine’s skin. He’s confident, irritating, presumptuous, and entirely too attractive for Felicity’s peace of mind. Their early interactions have that delicious antagonistic spark where you’re just waiting for all that frustration to turn into something else.
And, oh, does it.
What I really enjoyed, though, was that underneath the banter and chemistry, both Felicity and Nic have vulnerabilities they aren’t particularly eager to share. Their relationship doesn’t magically erase the things they’ve been through. Instead, as their reluctant partnership develops, they slowly begin creating a place where both of them might actually feel safe enough to stay.
The fight to protect their businesses gives them a reason to stop being adversaries and start seeing one another differently, and I loved watching that transition. The little moments of understanding and attraction begin accumulating until suddenly their relationship doesn’t feel quite so reluctant anymore.
Andie Burke balances the lighter elements of the story with a surprising amount of emotion. There is humor and plenty of romantic tension, but there are also grief, old wounds, secrets, and questions about what it means to rebuild your life when the future you imagined has completely changed.
I also loved the idea of “putting down roots” running throughout the story. Felicity’s plants may make the metaphor obvious, but it works beautifully here because this is ultimately a story about deciding whether you’ve finally found something—or someone—worth staying for.
Funny, heartfelt, steamy, and wonderfully tender, So It Grows is an enemies-to-lovers romance about second chances, unexpected community, and discovering that sometimes the life that grows after everything falls apart can be even better than the one you planned.
🌿🪴 And yes, the combination of plants + romance + mac and cheese is every bit as charming as it sounds.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Book Review: Strange Bedfellows by Amanda Mortlock
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — She ran from the wrong forever—and fake dated her way toward the right one.
Review Date: September 15, 2026 | Release Date: September 22, 2026
Sometimes walking away from the life you planned is the only way to find the life you were actually meant to have.
Maddy Beaumont is infamous in Cinnamon Springs for one thing: being the runaway bride. After leaving Myles at the altar and escaping to Europe, she eventually has to come home and face everything she left behind—including the judgment of a small town that definitely hasn’t forgotten what happened.
And then she discovers Myles has moved on.
Suddenly, all those doubts she thought she’d outrun come rushing back. Did she make the biggest mistake of her life? Or is seeing her ex with someone new simply making her mourn the future she once thought was guaranteed?
Enter Elliot: pastry chef, charming older brother of Maddy’s best friend, and the perfect candidate for a little fake-dating scheme designed to make Myles jealous.
Except pretending to be into Elliot becomes dangerously easy.
I loved that underneath the fun fake-dating setup, When Forever Falls Apart is really about Maddy figuring out what she wants when she stops allowing everyone else’s expectations to define her choices. Her uncertainty felt incredibly human. There’s a difference between missing someone and missing the life you imagined having with them, and watching Maddy untangle those feelings gave the romance more emotional depth than I expected.
And Elliot? He makes it very easy to root for the possibility of something new. Their chemistry builds through those delicious little moments where the line between pretending and reality gets blurrier and blurrier. Fake touches start lingering. Feelings become harder to dismiss. And suddenly the man who was supposed to help Maddy figure out whether she wanted her ex back might be exactly why she doesn’t.
The small-town setting adds another layer of fun because Cinnamon Springs comes with opinions, gossip, history, and absolutely nowhere to hide. Maddy’s past is waiting around practically every corner, which makes her journey toward deciding what—and who—she actually wants even more satisfying.
Romantic, emotional, funny, and filled with chemistry, When Forever Falls Apart is a story about realizing that a relationship ending doesn’t necessarily mean you failed. Sometimes the future falling apart simply makes room for a better one.
If you love fake dating, best friend’s older brother, small-town gossip, jealous exes, second chances at happiness, and romances where pretending catches feelings, put this one on your list.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Book Review: Strange Bedfellows by Amanda Mortlock
🐾🐾🐾🐾 — Dark, witchy, steamy, and wonderfully weird—a deliciously strange paranormal romance.
Review Date: September 15, 2026 | Release Date: September 22, 2026
Dark, witchy, romantic, and delightfully bizarre, Strange Bedfellows had me from the moment I realized its heroine occasionally turns into her love interest’s cat. Because really, how could I possibly resist that premise?
Cleo has spent years keeping people at a distance—and for very good reason. She’s carrying an impossible secret, along with pieces of a past she would much rather leave buried. Then she meets Wes, a brooding musician with secrets of his own, and the attraction between them is immediate. What begins as an intense college romance quickly becomes something much stranger when Wes discovers that Cleo is sometimes…his cat.
Yes. His actual cat.
But that revelation is only the beginning.
As Cleo and Wes learn that their connection goes far deeper than attraction—that Wes is a witch and Cleo is his familiar—the story opens into a dark, tangled world of magic, complicated relationships, buried memories, and dangerous history. Bailey and Ollie add another layer to the magical dynamics, and I loved watching the relationships among these characters become increasingly intertwined.
What surprised me most was how much darkness lurks underneath such a wonderfully quirky concept. There’s a dreamy, almost feverish quality to the story, but Mortlock isn’t afraid to venture into uncomfortable territory. Cleo is messy and guarded and not always easy to understand, and the deeper we get into her past, the clearer it becomes that her relationship with Wes is wrapped up in something much bigger—and more troubling—than either of them initially realizes.
The romance is intense and steamy, but it was the witch-and-familiar connection that really hooked me. There’s something incredibly intimate about the idea that these two are magically bound to one another while simultaneously trying to figure out whether the relationship they’re building is something they actually choose. Add in returning threats, morally complicated choices, toxic secrets, and the question of whether love can survive the truth, and I was completely invested.
Strange Bedfellows is weird in the best possible way: darkly romantic, magical, sexy, unsettling, and unlike anything I’ve read recently. If you like your paranormal romance with morally gray characters, gothic undertones, messy relationships, and a healthy dose of “what exactly did I just get myself into?”, Amanda Mortlock’s debut deserves a spot on your TBR.
And frankly, any book that can make “sometimes she’s his cat” work as a legitimate romantic plot point deserves some respect.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
