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Verdict: A cozy-looking Christmas tree farm romance that is really a book about grief, sobriety and surviving an abusive father, with a fat butch lead readers cherish, held back by a romance that runs hot and cold and a closed door that leaves the chemistry half on trust.
Best for: Readers who want a fat butch heroine and a bisexual Jewish femme, a found-family cast on a struggling family business, and a holiday book with real emotional weight, and who can live without on-page sex and a tidy, linear romance arc.
Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5 — romance.io’s “behind closed doors”)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.6/5 — a 3.66 Goodreads average across 4,572 ratings, with a loud split over whether the leads have chemistry at all)
Tropes: Butch/femme, grumpy-sunshine, enemies-to-lovers, inherited family business, save the farm, forced proximity, found family, homecoming, dual POV, closed door.
Season of Love by Helena Greer is the first book of the Carrigan’s Christmasland series from Forever, a contemporary lesbian romance set on a Jewish-run Christmas tree farm in a small town in upstate New York — and the collision at its centre is Miriam Blum, the artist who stayed away for ten years, walking back in after her great-aunt’s death to find that Noelle Northwood, the farm’s fat, butch, deeply protective manager, has already decided exactly who she is.
It sits at 3.66 across 4,572 Goodreads ratings and 3.71 across 2,596 StoryGraph reviews, and carried top-grade or warm reviews from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, Kirkus, Library Journal and the Lesbrary. But a third of its Goodreads ratings sit at three stars, and the book readers expected from the pink glitter cover is not the one they got. Understanding that gap is most of what you need before you start.
What Is Season of Love About?
Season of Love is a holiday romance in the Hallmark-movie mould — a homecoming, a failing family business, a small town that rallies, an eccentric cat — and readers say so constantly, usually with affection. It is also a debut that uses that frame to carry much heavier material than the genre normally holds: a recent death, an abusive father, a mother who stayed with him, and a heroine in recovery from alcoholism.
Miriam has built a controlled, successful life in Charleston — an art business about to expand, a fiancée who fits the plan — by cutting off everyone connected to her father, including the people she loved. Noelle, the farm’s manager, is in recovery, fiercely loyal to Cass, and convinced that Miriam simply abandoned her aunt. The book alternates between their points of view, which is what lets it work as enemies-to-lovers: you watch Noelle’s assumptions from the inside while already knowing why they are wrong.
What Makes This Butch/Femme Christmas Romance Work
- Noelle: A tall, fat, butch lesbian lead written as desirable is the element reviewers name most warmly. Smart Bitches and the Lesbrary both celebrate it.
- The weight under the tinsel: Grief, abuse and addiction recovery are handled with a seriousness readers repeatedly say they did not expect and ended up valuing. StoryGraph readers tag it emotional at 78% and hopeful at 57%.
- Jewish representation: Miriam’s Judaism is practised, not decorative. Reviewers praise the shiva, the holidays beyond Hanukkah and the running joke of a Jewish family selling Christmas.
- The found family: The Carrigan’s crew — cousin Hannah, Hannah’s ex Levi, Miriam’s friend Cole, the town — is a major draw, and some readers liked the cast more than the couple.
- Care up front: The book opens with a detailed content guidance page, and more than one reviewer thanks the author for it by name.
Book Synopsis
Miriam Blum has spent a decade keeping her life orderly: a thriving business making glittering, upcycled art, a new studio on the way in Charleston, and an engagement that makes sense on paper. What she has not done in all that time is go home. Home means her father, and her father is the reason she learned to live at arm’s length from everyone.
Then her great-aunt Cass dies — the one person who made her childhood bearable — and nobody told Miriam she was sick. She drives north to sit shiva at Carrigan’s, the Christmas tree farm and inn Cass ran in a town called Advent, intending to grieve and leave. The will changes the plan. Cass has split the business four ways, between Miriam, her cousin Hannah, Hannah’s ex Levi, and Noelle Northwood, the farm’s manager. And the farm is in serious financial trouble.
Noelle does not want Miriam there. She has built her life at Carrigan’s, she loved Cass like family, and Miriam is the niece who never visited. But the season is starting, the debts are real, and Miriam’s ideas are annoyingly good. As they work side by side to keep Carrigan’s alive through one more Christmas, the question is whether Miriam can stop running from the people she once had to escape — and what that means for the life waiting in Charleston.
My Review
The best thing here is the ambition. Greer takes the most comfortable template in romance — save the Christmas tree farm — and uses it to write about surviving a parent who hurts you, and coming back to the people you left behind. The grief for Cass is felt on every page, the father is a threat precisely because he never has to appear, and the book declines to give him a reconciliation.
The second strength is the pair on the page as people. Noelle is a butch heroine who is soft under the grump, sober and still working at it, and fat without the book asking anyone’s permission; Miriam is a bisexual femme whose control is visibly a survival strategy. StoryGraph readers say the characters develop at 84% and call them loveable at 80%, and 86% say their flaws are a main focus — which is the book’s whole method.
Where it struggles is the romance itself, and this is not a personal gripe — it is the most consistent complaint in the critical reviews. Several independent readers say the attraction is told rather than shown, and the phrase “hot and cold” recurs: hostile one chapter, longing the next, then a break before they have really started. Because the book is closed door, the moments that would normally make the chemistry undeniable happen off the page, so readers who did not already feel it had nothing to change their minds. Secondary problems stack up behind that: a debut’s wordiness, internal struggles revisited more often than they need to be, and a large cast some found interchangeable.
The expectation to reset is the cover. The pink glitter, the candy colours and the “romcom” in the marketing promise fluff. If a light holiday romp is what drew you, calibrate — this is a grief-and-recovery novel wearing a Christmas jumper. If the heaviness is what worried you, the book is hopeful throughout and the content page tells you exactly what is coming.
My honest note: A four-star heart in a three-and-a-half-star romance — the grief, the recovery and the fat butch lead are the reasons to read it, and the love story is the part you have to meet halfway. If you need to feel sparks on the page, the closed door and the hot-and-cold arc will frustrate you. If you want a Christmas book that takes pain seriously and still ends warm, this is it.
| Element | In Season of Love |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Miriam Blum & Noelle Northwood — bisexual Jewish artist and fat butch farm manager, grumpy-sunshine enemies-to-lovers |
| Core tropes | Butch/femme, save the farm, inherited business, forced proximity, found family, homecoming, dual POV |
| Setting | Carrigan’s, a Jewish-run Christmas tree farm and inn in Advent, upstate New York |
| Heat level | 2/5 — behind closed doors, fade to black |
| Series | Carrigan’s Christmasland book 1 — couple resolved here; books 2 and 3 follow other pairs |
| Content notes | Emotional and child abuse by a parent (off page, recalled), alcoholism and recovery, grief and death of a loved one, abandonment, toxic family relationships, mentions of antisemitism, homophobia and biphobia |
How Spicy Is Season of Love?
A 2/5. romance.io places it in its “behind closed doors” band, and Kirkus, the Lesbrary and a string of Goodreads reviewers all describe it as closed door or fade to black. The attraction is not muted, but when things progress, the scene ends. The Lesbrary’s reviewer says plainly she wished the book had opened the door.
The thing worth knowing in advance is not sexual. The abuse Miriam survived is a live theme rather than backstory, and the most-reported content warning on StoryGraph is emotional abuse, ahead of grief and alcoholism. No reviewer I found flags anything on the page beyond those themes. For other romances in the same heat band, The Chef and A Curious Woman sit at the same level.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you want a fat butch heroine written as the object of real desire, you like holiday books with emotional substance under the decorations, you value Jewish representation that goes beyond a Hanukkah cameo, and you enjoy a big found-family cast around the couple.
You may want to skip it if: you need explicit or even visible intimacy to believe in a romance, you are looking for a light, funny Christmas read to match the cover, you find parental abuse or addiction hard going in fiction, or you want a steady, linear build rather than a push-pull relationship.
In short: a warm, serious book with a romance at its centre that some readers feel in their bones and others never feel at all.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
There is no viral moment behind this book and nothing new driving it in 2026. What it has is a strong traditional-publishing launch — trade reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and a top “Squee” grade from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books — and a seasonal pull: Smart Bitches’ reviewer says she can see herself rereading it every December. The numbers have settled at 3.66 on Goodreads, 3.71 on StoryGraph and 3.81 on romance.io. The Goodreads distribution tells the real story: 58% of ratings are four or five stars, 31% sit at three, and only about one in ten go lower. The audiobook, from Hachette Audio, is read by Barrie Kreinik and Emily Lawrence and runs about nine and three-quarter hours; one Goodreads reviewer praises the narration, another DNF’d partly over an accent she found distracting.
Prefer audio? Listen to Season of Love on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The representation, first and most consistently. A fat butch lesbian lead and a bisexual Jewish femme come up in almost every positive review, usually alongside a note about how rarely readers get either. Second, the depth: the recurring reaction is that there is more here than readers expected, attached to the grief, the abuse and the recovery storyline, and readers keep saying the book is heavy without being depressing. Library Journal calls the love story “by turns heartbreaking and delightful.” Third, the setting and the cast — the inn, the trees, the cat, the friends — which readers repeatedly compare to a Hallmark movie — one reviewer’s version is the same film, only gayer and Jewish.
What readers argue about and complain about: Chemistry, above everything. The most repeated criticism in the negative reviews is that Miriam and Noelle’s relationship is told rather than shown, that it lurches between hostility and devotion, and that the feelings never build naturally. That complaint drives most of the two-star ratings. The second theme is expectation: readers who picked it up for fluff or for a Hanukkah story felt misled — one reader looking for a Hanukkah romance says Hanukkah is mentioned about twice. Third: the writing. Readers flag repetition, over-explained hurt feelings and dialogue that one reviewer likens to therapy-speak, and more than one calls it a debut with debut bumps. The genuine split is the closed door — some reviewers call it sweet and right for the story, others wanted the heat the cover promises.
The series question worth asking first: Season of Love resolves its own couple. Miriam and Noelle’s story is complete, and the sequel opens with them together as co-owners, so nothing here is left hanging. The epilogue does plant a hook for Hannah and Levi, which is book two. The warning is on the numbers: For Never & Always (2023) averages 3.40 across 1,470 Goodreads ratings and Hers for the Weekend (2024) 3.48 across 1,403. Book one is the best-rated and most-read of the three by a clear margin, so if this one only half-works for you, the series is unlikely to change your mind.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Season of Love a butch/femme romance?
Yes. Noelle is a tall, fat, butch lesbian and Miriam is a bisexual femme, and reviewers from Smart Bitches to the Lesbrary single out the fat butch lead as the book’s standout representation.
How spicy is Season of Love?
A 2/5. romance.io rates it “behind closed doors,” and Kirkus and readers agree it fades to black. The attraction is clearly on the page, but the sex is not.
Does Season of Love have a happy ending?
Yes. Miriam and Noelle end the book together, and the sequel confirms them as a couple. The epilogue sets up the next book’s romance between Hannah and Levi rather than leaving this one open.
Is Season of Love a light holiday romcom?
Not really. It has Hallmark-style trappings and plenty of humour, but its core is grief, recovery from alcoholism and the aftermath of an abusive parent. Check the author’s content guidance page before you start.
Do I need to read the Carrigan’s Christmasland books in order?
No. Each book follows a different couple and Season of Love stands alone. Reading it first does set up the farm and the cast.
Is there a Season of Love audiobook?
Yes. Hachette Audio’s edition is read by Barrie Kreinik and Emily Lawrence and runs about nine and three-quarter hours. It is available on Libro.fm and Audible.
If You Loved Season of Love, Read These Next
If Noelle is what won you over, Wrong Number, Right Woman by Jae gives you another soft-hearted butch lead in a low-heat, emotionally focused slow build. For butch/femme with the door wide open and a lighter tone, Three Reasons to Say Yes is the warmer, hotter counterpart. And if the Christmas-season heartache was the draw, A Million Dollar Marriage treats a sapphic relationship under strain with the same seriousness.
For more in this register, browse our butch lesbian romance guide or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
Season of Love tries to be two books at once — a cozy save-the-farm Christmas romance and a serious novel about grief and escaping an abusive family — and mostly pulls it off. The fat butch heroine is a genuine gift to the genre, the Jewish family at the heart of a Christmas business is written with love and wit, and the grief lands. It is also a romance whose chemistry a sizeable minority never feels, a closed-door book that keeps its most persuasive moments off the page, and a debut that repeats itself on the way to 384 pages. If you want your holiday reading to hurt a little and heal a lot, and you care more about the people than the heat, it is worth the season. Check Season of Love on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Season of Love ranks as a heartfelt traditionally published butch/femme holiday romance — emotionally serious and genuinely representative, held back by an uneven romantic arc, and best approached for Noelle, the grief and the found family rather than for sparks or spice.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ 3.66 average across 4,572 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ 3.71 across 2,596 StoryGraph reviews
- ✓ Top “Squee” grade from Smart Bitches
- ✓ 31% of Goodreads ratings sit at three stars
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Enemies-to-lovers powered by dual POV
- ✓ Attraction clearly on the page
- ✓ Library Journal: heartbreaking and delightful
- ✓ “Hot and cold” chemistry the top complaint
Characters ★★★★☆ 4.1/5
- ✓ 84% on StoryGraph report strong development
- ✓ Fat butch lead widely celebrated
- ✓ Bisexual Jewish heroine with real interiority
- ✓ Large cast some readers found interchangeable
Writing ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Humour balances the heavy themes
- ✓ Detailed content guidance page up front
- ✓ 72% of StoryGraph readers call it medium-paced
- ✓ Repetition and debut wordiness flagged
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 4.1/5
- ✓ 78% of StoryGraph readers tag it emotional
- ✓ Grief for Cass felt throughout
- ✓ Abuse aftermath handled without false reconciliation
- ✓ Cover sets up the wrong expectations
Heat Level ★★☆☆☆ 2/5
- ✓ romance.io’s “behind closed doors” band
- ✓ Kirkus and readers confirm fade to black
- ✓ Desire stays visible on the page
- ✓ Some readers wanted the door opened
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ Couple ends together, no cliffhanger
- ✓ Sequel confirms Miriam and Noelle as a couple
- ✓ Epilogue hooks book two gently
- ✓ Late push-pull frustrates some readers
Re-read Value ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Smart Bitches expects to reread it each December
- ✓ Two-narrator audiobook for a second pass
- ✓ Setting and cast reward a return
- ✓ Sequels rate lower, near 3.4–3.5
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