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–Synopsis–

Friends don’t let friends fake date alone.

Oscar Wilde once said, “Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.” Ha! Wrong. Dead wrong. And I can totally prove it.

For the last seven years, I’ve been just friends with Jack Holiday—yes, that Jack Holiday. The swoon-worthy, ridiculously famous, self-proclaimed king of the silver screen. Passion? Love? Worship? Please. Unless you count how much Jack worships himself. Take that, Oscar!

Okay, have I thought about being more than friends with Jack? Sure. I mean, the man waters my plants, never forgets my birthday, and knows exactly which ice cream to bring me—whether for PMS or heartbreak. But when our unlikely friendship began, I swore we’d never cross that line—even if Jack, like Oscar, doesn’t believe men and women can really be just friends.

Then Jack drops a bombshell: he wants to come home with me for the holidays. The guy who’s never cared about Christmas suddenly wants to play Mr. Holly Jolly. Worse, he needs me to pretend to be his fake girlfriend to save him from his ex. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’s laughing with my nieces and nephews, charming my family, and being . . . utterly, infuriatingly adorable.

And maybe—just maybe—we had to kiss.

Oh. Wow. So. So. So. Good.

So amazing, it’s making me want to swallow my pride and beg Oscar for forgiveness. But once you leave the friend zone, there’s no going back. There’s no safety net. Now, I have to ask myself, is risking our friendship worth the fall? And will Jack still be there to catch me?

–Review–

*Trigger Warnings: There are some instances of cussing, as well as Jack dealing with some abandonment and father issues*

‘When Ivy Met Mr. Holiday’ is the first book from Jennifer Peel on my blog. While I enjoyed the writing and the banter amongst the main characters, I had some problems with Ivy’s character and the romance between her and Jack.

This book follows both perspectives of Ivy and Jack. This book does something a bit different with how it is set up, you get a bit of a forward from both characters setting up the plot of the story. Then at the end, you have them come back for an interview, sort of rounding out the story. I enjoyed this quality as it is a bit unique to what I typically read. Fake relationship, famous love interest, and friends-to-lovers are the main tropes in this book.

The story in part, takes place in Austin, Texas where Ivy and Jack both have properties. The majority of the story takes place where Ivy grew up in Aspen Lake. I tried looking to see where that was but could not find out the state in the book. Per a Google search, I found an Aspen Lake in Oregon so hopefully that is lore accurate.

Ivy is a hairdresser who lives in Austin, Texas. It was through her very salon that she met Jack Holiday. Being a no-nonsense type of person, Ivy was quick to knock Jack down a couple pegs and uses their now 7-year friendship as an excuse to remind Jack that he is still just a human every day. Stubborn is a great word to describe Ivy, after all, that very stubbornness is what partially spawned this whole story. After all, she is so ready to prove that men and women can remain just friends, by getting into a fake relationship with her best friend, Mr. Holiday himself.

Her stubbornness did come off as quite childish at times for me. On one hand, she was making it seem like she was craving having a family of her own and yet, she was holding herself back due to her pride of needing to be right. Meanwhile, I am thinking of how she is already in her 30’s with a very real biological clock, so how long was she willing to push her feelings for Jack to the side just to be right? Her actions and motivations seemed contrary to what she truly wanted, and I am not a fan of adult characters who are this oblivious and unwilling to pay attention to what is going on around them.

She seemed to have everything she could ever want at the palm of her hands: an amazingly attractive, rich and famous actor who only has eyes for her, and an amazingly close and nurturing family who has her back. Her attitude was making her come off as unappreciative of her blessings.

Jack is the famous hunky actor love interest in the story. Despite his negative and broken childhood, he kept his happy go lucky attitude and positive demeanor. In fact, you would think Ivy had had that upbringing considering her dumpy attitude basically the whole book. He claims to have had feelings for Ivy since that first meeting in her salon but then I question why it took 7 years before he decided to do something about it. I understand how hard Ivy was going against the whole love thing, but again, you are even more in your 30’s than Ivy at this point so how long was this charade going to go on? I will say, I loved how much Jack was paying attention to Ivy throughout the book. His love and adoration for her was palpable and swoon worthy.

The whole fake dating plan was actually Jack’s idea to begin with due to his ex-girlfriend not taking no for an answer. To Jack, this plan seemed to be a perfect way of getting Ivy to finally come to terms with her obvious feelings towards himself. Just looking back at where this plot takes them and how much drama that got started; I can say this idea was not coming from the top brass (no offense to Jack). Personally, I could not help but feel bad for Ivy’s family who had been waiting for Ivy and Jack to get together all these years. The disappointment was real once the jig was up.

The whole romance between Ivy and Jack felt one sided to me. You have Ivy who spends the majority of the time denying her feelings, weighing the pros and cons of dating not just Jack, but famous actor Jack Holiday. On the flip side, you have Jack who was honest (at least to himself) about his feelings for Ivy, and willing to deal with Christmas joy for Ivy with no question (due to his trauma he is not a fan of the holiday, but he knew Ivy loved it, so he dealt with it). Ivy began questioning what Jack saw in her when he had so many beautiful women pining for him. While I would never call Ivy ugly, I was questioning that myself just based solely on her attitude. Again, I can understand the fear of ruining your years long friendship, but that is where the best relationships start! Her keeping Jack in the friend zone this entire time, made Ivy’s switch to all of a sudden openly pining for Jack feel even less genuine so I was not quite sure what to feel with them.

Something else that threw me off a bit was how everyone treated Jack when the misunderstanding plotline came around full force. Ivy and her whole family acted like he had just slapped everyone across the face. I understand how the situation looked, but everyone knew how sketchy his ex was, or that the press would have it out for him so why did they not show him a little bit of grace? You would think you should have a good idea of someone’s character by the end of 7 years, but I guess not? The cold shoulder came after Ivy’s family were so overjoyed thinking Jack and Ivy were finally together that the 180 gave me a bit of a whiplash.

All in all, this book has some aspects I did not enjoy but that does not mean it was bad or that nobody else out there would enjoy it. If you are into holiday contemporary romances with fake relationships and famous love interests, this may be a book for you.

-About the Author-

Jennifer Peel is a USA Today bestselling author who didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer, she was aiming for something more realistic like being the first female president. When that didn’t work out, she started writing just before her fortieth birthday. Now after publishing several award-winning and bestselling novels she’s addicted to typing and chocolate. When she’s not glued to her laptop and a bag of Dove dark chocolates, she loves spending time with her family, making daily Target runs, reading, and pretending she can do Zumba.