CBR15 Book 79: "For Never & Always" by Helena Greer

Page count: 369 pages

Rating: 5 stars

When she was little, Hannah Rosenstein's parents traveled all over the world, and the only place she ever felt safe and settled was at the Christmas tree farm owned by her father's great-aunt Cass. At Carrigan's Christmas Tree Farm, she would also get to spend time with Levi, whose parents were the cook and groundskeeper at Carrigan's and who in practicality ran the farm for Cass. When Hannah got older, she persuaded her parents to let her go live at Carrigan's so she could go to high school in one place, and she finally felt like she had a home and a safe haven. She, Levi, and her cousin Miriam were together in the summers, and Cass began talking about leaving the farm to Hannah someday.

Levi "Blue" Matthews never felt at home at Carrigan's or in the little town where he went to school. It was impossible for him to forget that his parents, and he and his siblings were "the help". Hannah and Miriam were his favourite people in the world and kept saying that the Matthews were family, but Cass always made it clear that Levi would never be good enough for her Hannah, and he should stay far away from her.

Despite Cass' dire warnings, Levi and Hannah's obvious love for one another wasn't going to go away, but they always wanted fundamentally different things. Hannah never wanted to leave Carrigans, and Levi couldn't wait to get away and make something of himself out in the wide world.

After four years away, Levi is returning to Carrigans (now an All-Year destination, not just a Christmas tree farm), because Cass, not content to meddle in his life only when she was alive, left a quarter of the farm to him, Hannah, his cousin Miriam and the general manager Noelle. He has travelled all over the world and is now an internationally famous chef (internet famous because of his participation in Australia's Next Top Chef). He has finally achieved his goal of becoming someone worthy of Hannah and has every intention of winning her back. Except Hannah's heart was well and truly shattered when Levi left her behind, and she has spent a long time rebuilding her life. All she wants is for Levi to sign over his shares of Carrigans, grant her a divorce (oh yeah, they got secretly married), and leave her alone forever.

Levi has his work cut out for him. There's a very high-profile bride who would love it for world-famous Chef Matthews to cater her wedding in three months, and since Carrigans All-Year needs the money and the publicity the wedding will bring, Hannah has to reluctantly agree to let Levi stay that long. He challenges her to a Shenanigan (read Seasons of Love to fully get an idea of what Shenanigans entail), and she has to grant him five dates. If he doesn't manage to get Hannah to fall back in love with him, he'll sign the divorce papers and divide his shares between her, Miriam, and Noelle. But if he succeeds, he gets the only woman he's ever loved back.

To say that I've been waiting for this book for a long time is an understatement. I read Helena Greer's debut romance, about Miriam and Noelle around Christmas time last year. That book ends with Levi returning to Hannah at Carrigans. Back in June, I got the offer of an ARC of this book, but because of geographical restrictions, neither the NetGalley link they sent me nor the direct widget Ms. Greer's publisher tried to send me worked. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty gutted. Still, I had the book pre-ordered and the second it arrived on my Kindle I spent most of the day enjoying my time back at Carrigans. This book starts right where the previous one left off. You don't have to have read it to enjoy this one, but it's one of the best romances I read in 2022, so why wouldn't you read it too?

Seasons of Love pretty much does your traditional Hallmark movie, except the protagonists are both queer and most of the characters are Jewish. In this novel, we have a second-chance romance, where the protagonists are secretly married and one of the central questions is whether that marriage can be saved or not. The problem Levi and Hannah had was not that they didn't love each other enough, it was that they wanted and needed fundamentally different things, and didn't communicate well enough to explain those wants and needs to each other. 

By the time Levi decided that he had to go off into the world to make something of himself, Carrigans hadn't just become Hannah's safe haven, it was a place she literally couldn't leave because of severe anxiety. Miriam and Hannah were always doted on by Cass, and no one, not even his closest family, knew how uncomfortable and unwanted Cass made him. To Hannah, living at Carrigans and going to high school in a stable environment was great. To Levi, who understood early that he was queer and never really had any friends who accepted him wholeheartedly except Hannah and Miriam (who never got to spend too much time at Carrigans, thanks to her controlling father), in addition to the feeling that while Hannah and Miriam were family to Cass, the Matthews family were mere servants.

Four years apart have given both sides of our couple a lot of time to reflect on their wants and needs, but until they reunite and begin to actually try talking to one another about the things that really matter, they won't have a chance for a future together. I love Hannah and Levi, together and apart. I liked seeing Miriam and Noelle as supporting characters instead of as the main focus of a story. The cameo appearances from Cole, Miriam's best friend, and Tara, her ex (who is getting her own romance next year - with a book that has my absolute favourite cover of the three) were also great. This book will absolutely become a comfort re-read for me in the years to come. 

Judging a book by its cover: Leni Kauffman has a gift and pretty much always makes cute and inviting romance covers. Hannah and Levi look exactly as described, and the purple background doesn't hurt either. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR14 Book 51: "Season of Love" by Helena Greer

Page count: 390 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Ten years ago, Miriam Blum cut all ties with her entire family, including her eccentric great-aunt. Now she turns antique junk into creative and incisive art and has a loyal following on Instagram. She has a beautiful and wealthy fiancée and while they're never going to share a passionate romance, they love each others as friends and support one another. Miriam is working towards finally opening her own art studio in Charleston when she is informed that her great-aunt Cass died (no one had even told Miriam that Cass was ill) and she drops everything to go to her aunt's large Christmas tree farm in upstate New York to sit shiva. She's terrified at the prospect that her father might be there, but also needs to see her remaining relatives.

Once she arrives at Carrigan's, her aunt's big farm, she discovers that Levi, her childhood friend not only dated her cousin and former best friend Hannah for years, then took off and broke her heart, but that Hannah has been pretty much running the farm with the assistance of the capable and rather hostile Noelle. Noelle found a warm welcome, a second (more supportive family) and a new home at Carrigan's and cannot understand how Miriam could have hurt everyone so much by just disappearing for a decade, cutting herself off from everyone. The fact that Miriam seems to be welcomed back by everyone with open arms, her long absence forgiven without any consequences, riles Noelle up even more. Luckily, Miriam won't be staying long - she'll go back to her art scene in Charleston and marry her perfect lawyer fiancée and Noelle won't have to deal with her or admit to her very inconvenient attraction to the woman.

Of course, Cassiopeia Carrigan loved to meddle and match-make, and once her will is read, it turns out she has left the Christmas tree farm in equal shares to Noelle, Hannah, Miriam, and Levi. Not only did she go back on her promise to leave it to only Noelle and Hannah, but she also hid the fact that the farm was financially struggling and that she wants all four of her heirs to work together to save the place (and in the case of Hannah and Noelle, their home). Miriam is flabbergasted, Noelle is furious, Levi is off somewhere in the world, unable to be reached - while Hannah is just exhausted. Miriam understands the shock of the other two women, but after some consideration, might just have an idea to save Carrigan's and make it a financial success, she just needs to get her cousin/former best friend and her cousin's new best friend (who seems decidedly anti-Miriam) to agree to let Miriam stay, at least until Thanksgiving. 

If this seems like an overly detailed plot summary, relax, all of this is revealed within the first 20% of the book. The story is told through both Noelle and Miram's points of view, starting with Miriam getting her upsetting news and moving on with the plot at rather breakneck speed. Despite pretty much every single character in this story having a trailers worth of emotional baggage, trauma to process, and due to Cass' recent death, recent grief to work through, this book feels like a warm hug, and even though there are absolutely sections where heartbreak, alcoholism and/or severe emotional abuse is covered, it never gets too heavy or angsty and I never once had to put the book down because it was overwhelming me with the sads.

Helena Greer is basically writing a pretty standard romantic comedy here, but the protagonists are both lesbians, and one of the protagonists, as well as much of her actual and found family is Jewish. Obviously, because Cass owned and ran a Christmas tree farm, there are a bunch of both Jewish and more traditionally Christian holiday traditions explored, in a really cozy way. I would happily have read an entire book about any of these characters and was delighted to discover that the next book will be about Hannah and her globe-trotting ex, Levi. I also hope that Miriam's amazing BFF Cole gets a book of his own because he was a scene-stealing marvel and I refuse to believe that he can be contained as only the supporting role in someone else's novel. I would also like Miriam's ex Tara to get her own book, as she was a pretty awesome lady, who just happened to have her 'marriage of convenience' partner go off and fall for someone else. 

As well as being a lovely, rather slow-burn romance, there is such wonderful friendships and although very few of the family connections are biological, it shows all the more how important it is to have people who love and support you. A lot of queer people have experienced rejection from their born families, and have had to find their new families elsewhere. This is absolutely the case for both Noelle and Miriam, who have a lot of things in common while they are also extremely different. 

The whole book is peppered with pop culture references that seem like they were tailored especially to me. I take this to mean that Helena Greer and I would get on like a house on fire, and not only would I be great friends with all the various characters in this book, but I would be a perfect best friend for Ms. Greer. So you know, if you're in the market for that, Ms. Greer, send me a message!

It's a shame I read this so late in the year, as it very likely could have ended up in my top three favourites of the year over on Cannonball Read otherwise. It will absolutely be in my top ten and I will be impatiently awaiting Hannah and Levi's book sometime in 2023. 

Judging a book by its cover: While I still think the trend for cutesy cartoon covers should be over soon, please, this one is really quite adorable. Both Noelle and Miriam look pretty much exactly as described, and Kringle the cat is also in the picture. The couple wrapped up in a garland of coloured lights with small signifiers of most of the characters' Jewish background seemingly floating in the air around them, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that this book is very Jewish and also very queer. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.