Rating: ★★★★
Audience: Christmas Romance
Length: 368 pages
Author: Farah Heron
Publisher: Forever
Release Date: October 21st, 2025
Image & Other Reviews on: Goodreads

BOOK SUMMARY:

There are two things that Ruby Dhanji loves with her whole entire Christmas and anything to do with the UK. For Ruby the holiday season means joy, generosity, and warm memories with her late mother. And now she’s on the verge of realizing the dream she and her mom always moving to England and opening a cozy inn. The only problem, Ruby needs some hotel experience first. 
 
Rashid just doesn’t get all the holiday hype. But when he meets a woman dragging home a Christmas tree alone from the Winter Market, he has to offer to help—even if he soon finds Ruby adores all the things he dislikes. When Ruby discovers that Rashid’s family owns a luxury boutique hotel chain in Britain, she offers him a she’ll help him give his young nieces an amazing Christmas if he’ll facilitate an introduction to his family. 
 
As Ruby and Rashid get closer, she realizes that the great big grump loves his large, eccentric family fiercely. And when their friendship turns to something more, she’s afraid she’s falling for someone weeks before she moves across the Atlantic and she’ll soon have to decide which dream she wants to chase. 

PRETTY GOOD.

This is my first book by this author and I liked it! I especially appreciated that this wasn’t spice forward and provided a lot of relationship build up and self growth in the midst of the holiday moments. Also, the audiobook was good too.

I struggled with the FMC at first because of a general personality clash, but decided to continue and the longer it went on the more I did like Ruby and backstory and overall why for this book. I liked her connection with Rashid and the enemies-ish banter as they both realized there are many layers to each other and started opening up.

The third act did make me a bit cranky but that was my only big complaint. I would love to read another book from Farah Heron.

Overall audience notes:

• Holiday Romance
• Language: mild
• Romance: 2ish quick open door
• Violence: low
• Content warnings: mention of breast cancer (and losing a parent), emotional abuse

Instagram || Goodreads || The StoryGraph