A new season, a new chance to find love

Synopsis

You are cordially invited to your Happy Ever After…

Emma Love is a matchmaker who believes in old fashioned courtship, over swiping left or right. She’s inspired by Jane Austen, Bridgerton and a thousand and one perfect romance stories, where matches were made at elegant soirees and not by sliding into your intended’s DMs.

This year, Emma is inviting you to a very special social season, where a hopeful singleton might find their own Mr Darcy waiting under the mistletoe. At a series of glamorous, festive, and, most importantly, romantic events, Emma is making it her mission to find love for everyone this Christmas Season.

How will she fare trying to find perfect matches for the Price twins, both too busy trying to outdo the other to ever look for love? Can she encourage the sexy Season rake, Theo, to change his ways? And what of Hope Lucas, who Emma has failed to match before, but who still has faith that Mr Right is out there?

And with Emma so focused on finding everybody else’s happy ever after, is she at risk of letting her own perfect match slip away?

Welcome to the Christmas Season.

An uplifting, original and romantic read that fans of Bridgerton, Lex Croucher and Lindsey Kelk will love.

My review

As her first Season was a success, Emma Love is determined to make people fall in love once again, through Jane Austen – like courtship, and not by swiping left or right.
This time, it’s a Christmas Season, and perhaps Emma’s matchmaking skills are being truly tested as she wants to find a match for Hope, someone who didn’t find her Mr. Darcy last season. But also Hope’s twin cousins and Hope’s best friend Theo are a challenge for Emma.
But also with Emma’s own Mr. Darcy, Tom, things aren’t that easy… With Emma’s focus on the Season and an unexpected offer, and Tom’s worries about his mother’s health and his own emotional turmoil, is a happily ever after that easily being found? 

When reading a sequel to a book I’ve read, I am always a little bit afraid that something will happen that will undo everything that happened in Book 1 and that somehow I will be a little bit disappointed by the twist.
So with a little trepidation I started on this book, and I can say now with a clear conscience I loved it!  

Obviously Emma is back in the game, ready to start a brand new season. This time she has Tom by her side, the man she has fallen love with.
It was great to see these two still together and still very much in love.  

The author could have made it herself very easy by having everything run smoothly between Emma and Tom, but she didn’t. Just like relationships in real life, when you fall in love, thing in your life have to shift, to allow room for the wonderful change. 

And I liked it somehow to see how especially Emma isn’t not right there yet. Now, don’t think that Emma is doing this on purpose, but it is all that she truly knows. Her parents and even her brother and sister – in – law somehow all were invested in the matchmaking scene. So it’s difficult for Emma to comprehend that Tom just isn’t.
He has his own dreams to follow, his own career, and he doesn’t want to be that much involved in Emma’s careerwise world. 

Of course, that doesn’t take away that they truly love each other, it’s just that they (Emma) are (is) struggling to find the right balance. And then throughout the story there are developments that may or may not change things around.
Perhaps the situations Emma and Tom are finding themselves in aren’t that recognizable for us, but the feelings for sure are. 

However, the focus of this next wonderful chapter is on Hope, Connie and Grace. 

Hope went to the previous Season but didn’t find her own Mr. Darcy. As this annoys Emma, she is determined to find Hope’s perfect match. 

At first Hope’s behaviour bothered me a little bit. When she has a date, she meekly agrees to whatever suggestion is being made. But then the truth came out, and how her previous relationship affected her, I suddenly understood Hope a lot better. It all made sense. 

While it was great to see how Hope has found someone, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I rather wanted Hope to end up with someone else, someone closer to her, who has stood by her side for years… 

And then there are Connie and Grace…
I think it safe to say that they are their own enemies. Their (healthy) sibling rivalry are just making things worse for themselves. 

Connie feels like the ‘lesser’ sister, the rebellious one. Clearly she is still struggling with finding the real Connie and she feels like she can never excel the way Grace has.
She even feels so low of herself that she is jeopardizing her own happiness, as she suspects that her own love interest is more interested in Grace than in herself. 

And it saddened me to see how low Connie thinks of herself, because we can clearly see behind the façade she is showing us. Why shouldn’t anyone be interested in her? Yes, Grace may be less rebellious as Connie, but that doesn’t mean that people cannot fall for Connie… Connie and Grace are both unique in their own marvellous ways. Being twins doesn’t mean they have to be exactly the same person! 

Grace on the other hand is struggling herself. While she also has an interest in Connie’s love interest, she finds herself more and more entwined with the bit obnoxious Jon Rackman.
Grace and Jon couldn’t be more different on so many different levels. Yet as a reader it’s clear that they connect in an unexpected way. Yet while Grace may perhaps be quicker on realizing her feelings, Jon himself has several and strong demons to chase away.
And Grace finds herself in a position where she cannot do anything about it… 

There are a lot of main characters in this book. Yet I never felt at loss, I knew exactly whose story I was reading.
And having several plots, also gave me the opportunity to digest each part separately. 

While the purpose of The Christmas Season, and Emma’s of course, is finding love, in general it felt more a story about finding yourself, about family, about how being yourself is more than enough. And it’s also about family ties, how no matter who you are, what you are or where you are, your family is always there for you, accepting you for who you are, without any strings attached.
And that for every Elizabeth Bennet, there is a Mr/Ms Darcy. We just have to open our eyes to find him/her!