ARC Review: You Make It Feel Like Christmas by Sophie Sullivan

You Make It Feel Like Christmas
Author: Sophie Sullivan
Publication: St. Martin's Griffin (September 23, 2025)

Description: All bets are off when a single-minded photographer and a professional hockey player are forced to spend a week together on his sister’s Christmas tree farm, perfect for fans of Jenny Holiday and Maggie Knox.

Maisie Smart doesn’t look back. Not on the choice she made to be a photographer, and not on the one-night stand she had six months ago. But sleeping with a professional hockey player who bolted the morning after is a whole new level of embarrassing. Now she’s about to spend the week at Tickle Tree Farms with her family this Christmas―and then the universe throws a Grinch in her festive plans.

Nick King is a mess. After a significant injury benches him, he has more time to dwell on his anxieties and the one-night stand he can’t get out of his head. With the holidays around the corner, he figures visiting his sister and nephew at their Christmas tree farm will be a good way to sort himself out. That’s impossible when he learns Maisie is there, still beautiful and justifiably angry about the way he left. But Christmas is the time for second chances, and the forced proximity may help Nick and Maisie unwrap feelings neither of them can walk away from twice.

My Thoughts: A dyslexic photographer and a professional hockey player with anxiety meet unexpectedly six months after their one-night stand when they get together for a family Christmas celebration. 

Maisie Smart joins her parents, older sister and older brother with the brother's husband's family to celebrate the holidays. She loves Christmas but she doesn't love that her mother keeps trying to encourage her to go back to school to get degrees and give up her "hobby" of photography. She also trying to deal with her broken heart after the one-night stand she fell for ghosted her.

Nick King is recovering from a knee injury and has some tough decisions to make about his future in professional hockey when he joins his sister and nephew for the holiday season. He's suffering from anxiety and rightly so as the injury joins the death of his mother and his sister's divorce in the worry column. He also can't stop thinking about the woman he met at a wedding six months earlier. 

They have a lot to deal with when they meet again at his sister's new tree farm. Maisie wonders of she can give him a second chance, and she wonders how their lives can possibly mesh with her in Seattle and him traveling with his hockey team. This was a great contemporary romance. I loved the characters.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.