This is a great read, not really a Christmas novel it's just starts that time of year, which makes it more endearing. 

Ellie comes from a humble begins, her mother sarts out as a housekeeper and Ellie sees her sewing and ironing the Cavendish clothes. But she gains the promotion to household manager.

But deep down she has a plan to rise above this either collage (which she can't yet afford, just working part time in the grocery store) or he rather dubious idea begin a relationship with one of the Cavendish boys, whose father owns the estate were she lives with her mother in staff cottages 

The father, Lionel Cavendish is said to have "ruled his empire with a rod of iron". He also seems to favour one of his sons over the other. The Ashton Estate is 50 acre on the edge of a lake and very beautiful.

It then jumps forward 7 years and then at goes on forward months and I wish I was filled in a bit better.

I loved the drama / dark side arer
of this book as it comes together in the very last part of the book, it is well worth the wait and makes it stand out to from the usual romantic novels. 

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me a digital copy of this book in exchange for a honest review. 



Sent from my Galaxy

When I read the synopsis on the book I knew I needed to give it a try! I could tell I was going to love the story. I grew very fond of almost all the the characters. I couldn’t put it down. I was set to give the book a great review when it seemed to be wrapping up and all was well. Then I realized I was only at 70% of the story. From that point on the book lost me. I think maybe it should have ended and then used the rest to create a second book. It went from sweet and emotional to a bit silly. It kind of ruined it for me. If I could go back I’d stop before I got to that part because the first part really was great!

Thank you BooksGoSocial for the copy of the book.

An enjoyable and somewhat predictable romance. Surprised by the English spelling of colour/color, etc. and had to verify this was taking place in the United States. That may be changed now as I read an ARC. The romance and the upstairs/downstairs feel of the story was charming. The use of the "f" word was glaring when it occurred. I also would have been happier without the intimate details. Overall I really enjoyed the story.

You do know what you are getting with Sophie Penhaligon, there will be love, a bit of suspense and some fairly graphic sex! It will all end happily ever after and sometimes that is the right sort of book to tuck into as the nights start drawing in.

Unfortunately, this book was a big miss for me. Despite the summary having a clear premise, the story itself had almost no plot. It felt like a series of occurrences that happened without any tension or motive. All of the characters were one-dimensional and a bit stereotypical. I kept reading, hoping things would fall together, and it just didn't happen.

2.5/5 stars, the half star is because I flew through this book and that should count for something.

The premise of this story is really cute, but the execution really lacked for me. The main character, Ellie, isn't very likable and while there were a lot of growth opportunities for her, when things got hard, she always reverted back to being a judgmental teenager, in my opinion. Leo on the other hand, is absolutely wonderful. He's got a lot of empathy and respect and I liked that he insisted on talking to avoid miscommunication. The side characters where nice, but not very present. They could have had more significant roles, which would have given the story more depth.

Now, the story itself. Like I said, lovely premise. The fact that these two characters have this connection, growing up together, sort of, made them developing feelings for each other believable. The way Ellie acted up until she was 25, though, was ridiculous. She still sounded like a petulant teen when talking about Leo. And let's not even talk about her stupid fantasies regarding Felix. I know love is blind, but come on. Speaking of Felix, some of the things that happen in this story are just too out of the blue for me. Certain events where too dramatic and didn't fit in with the rest of the story, and consequently also weren't dealt with appropriately (speaking of the aftermath). From about 70% on, the pace was just off for me and nothing flowed anymore.

Now, from the reviews I've seen, a lot of people don't feel the same way I did, so if the premise intrigues you, I'd say go for it! It's a short book and you'll probably fly through it like I did and hopefully you'll enjoy it more 😅

I love a good romance and this has become a firm favourite of 2021. Your typical romance with a little twist there is nothing metal taxing about this book. The perfect weekend read after a long week.

Ellie and her mother live on the Cavendish property as her mother is employed by the family. They live in the servants cottage while the family lives in the estate. Such is Ellie's view of life... always on the outside. But she is determined to find her way in. The plans to have the youngest Cavendish boy, Felix, fall in love with her and together they'll have their (very wealthy, socially affluent) happily ever after. Thwarted by Felix's older brother, Leo, and his mother, Ellie's plans never take flight. She tucks her tail between her legs and goes away to architectural school, She spends the next years of her life working hard at her career and at her continued hate of Leo Cavendish. She doesn't return to the estate for almost seven years until it's basically unavoidable.

When Ellie is forced to face Leo again, she begins to realize she may have misjudged him. Along with her judgement of Felix, and their mother, and her fiancé, and many other areas of her life. Ellie is learning that her judgements of many aspects of her life may have been way off... so much so that she feels like life if she knows it is imploding. She must decide to make the choice to release old hurts and stereotypes in order to move forward. She also must learn to forgive herself for the choices of her past and allow love to be a part of her future.

Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

The original Sabrina was a favorite of mine growing up. I was afraid of how this would go. If it was a complete copy, that'd be unoriginal. if it was "inspired by," how far would it deviate and how much would I like it?

I actually started the first few sentences and the shriek/whine was a bit off-putting. I need to like my heroines and we've all read books where we didn't like the main character. So, I put this book down and read something in between. Then, I returned and finished this... in a day.

You're wanting "Linus" to win her over, but part of the charm of the movie was you could see why she started with "David." On this, we already sensed there was some skeeviness and you've got to wonder why "L" pined for her for so long, whereas the movie presented a more organic falling in love story.

Overall, this turned out better than I expected.

This was an unexpected favorite. Ellie was a bit difficult in the beginning but really grew on me by about 30%. I loved every scene with the Cavendish's, especially Leo!! It did feel more like womens fiction than romance at times but I love both genres so that was fine by me.

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, but there was something off from the start. For one thing, I couldn't figure out where it was set. I finally figured out it was the US, but it was written by someone from the UK who now lives in the US, which explains why things seemed a little strange. The tone is off for a book that is supposed to be about Americans. It always seems to be about people from a small British village and manor house. Go figure.

I didn't like the characters much, either. Ellie is one surly teenager. Penhaligon offers up two brief examples of her friendships (being piggybacked up the hill by a friend on the way to work one of the fancy parties, swimming at the lake with her friend Jenny), but mostly we see her treating her mother poorly and hating pretty much everyone else. She doesn't get any nicer as she gets older. Cold, aloof, in a loveless relationship with her boss. Sure, she's successful at school and then in business, but that seems to be the extent of it. She hasn't been home to visit her mother in a long time, it seems. She's content to just work and climb the corporate ladder. Hard to care about someone like that.

Then there is Leo. Has he truly been celibate and pining for a girl who hasn't given him a second thought (except to hate him from afar) for the past seven years? I hope we are just not given the details of his many girlfriends. I would hate to think he has been truly "playing the long game" in the hopes that he would somehow snag Ellie. It's creepy to think he fell in love with her when she was 16 and he's been waiting around for her ever since.

There was just so much wrong here. Yes, it's "just" a romance novel, but I read plenty of them and this one didn't sit well. I had high hopes for it, but in the end, I was simply disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for this unbiased review.

I wanted to like this book. The cover drew me in, as well as the fact that I will read anything that is an enemies-to-lovers plot. I got through the first few pages with excitement, hoping that the story would get more interesting as it progressed. Ellie started out in the first chapter as a sixteen-year-old and we quickly progressed through time until she was in her late twenties and in an engagement of convenience. Even though Ellie was now approaching thirty, I felt like she still acted like she was a teenager. Ellie’s interactions with Leo also don’t hold that angry tension that readers of enemies-to-lovers romance books so love. Not only was I disappointed in the character interactions, I also found it very difficult to read with the majority of sentences starting with “I” or a person’s name. This just threw off the pace of the whole story. Most of the scenes came off as either boring or fast paced. Not allowing the scenes to have enough time for character development or good story progression. Overall, this could be a great story line if it had been executed correctly.

Playing the long game is a feel good romance.
The author describes well how teenagers usually think with their hormones and not their heads. That is what happens to Ellie. She is young, beautiful, and has vowed that she will make the youngest son of the manor falls in love with her. Because you see, Ellie is the daughter of the housekeeper on a huge estate and she thinks that life is unfair, as she cannot mingle with the rich kids. She wants the wealth and the fame and the love of course. She is actually an annoying, self-centered, whining, entitled teenager.
Of course her dreams don't come completely true and destiny has a few twists in store for her. One of them is the older son of the estate, Leo, a man that Ellie has decided she would hate until the end of her days.
This is an enjoyable romance, where they married and lived happily ever after. Perfect for an evening by the fire and nice warm drink, a quick read that will put you in a good mood.
Recommended to people who like fairy-tale romances.

The synopsis of this makes it seem a bit like the film Sabrina but while they have their similarities, Sophie Penhaligon takes a different approach to the tale which I ended up really enjoying.

I admired Ellie's character and I thought the chemistry between her and Leo was well done. Leo was of course the perfect love interest. Kind, patient and supportive. I like how Ellie's feelings for him grew gradually and how honest they were with one another.

My only criticism of the story would be that I wasn't a fan of the conflict in the story. I thought the villain was a little too moustache twirling for me. The choices made in the last 20% of the book completely took me out of the story because it just seemed a little melodramatic and far-fetched.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It was very entertaining.

I just find the dialogue too cheesy for my taste — but then again, it is a romance novel, so that should have been expected.

I love how the author wrote the characters and made them “real” — real for me because I know that the behaviors/reactions in real life would be the same for most if given similar circumstances. The characters were not “too fiction” and I liked that.

Ellie showed that with hard work and patience anything is possible, may it be in love or in ensuring that she is never seen inferior again.

Overall, it is a story packed with romance, witty comebacks and drama that I think a lot would enjoy reading.

I received this book for free for an honest review from netgalley #netgalley

Romantic and sweet! It kept me up late reading this one. It hit the spot.

A other well written book which makes you want to keep on reading! Well done on a brilliant book. I will be looking out for more!

"Aww.. it's so good! "- That's my first though after reading this book.

Really felt nice after reading a good romance .. this story , characters, emotions and all were so perfect it drawed me right into it from the very first... I couldn't stop reading and I was laughing all the way through it.
Actually I am in between exams and so stressed I mean serious exam tension & stress .. and was running on 4 hrs sleep everyday
Reading this book was so refreshing and it kinda felt nice.. once again I was reminded how thankful I should be about books
God knows what I need!


Content warning: one closed door sex scene - not graphic just a lil 🔥
-Kidnapping scene not disturbing though.

This was a tricky one for me to decide on a rating. The beginning was a bit slow for me and I sometimes struggle with romance novels anyway because they can get pretty cheesy. I was worried this was going to be a disappointing read, but it definitely picked up and I got more invested as I kept reading. In saying that, it was still cheesy and predictable but I ended up loving that!

This novel involved a classic enemies to lovers trope. Ellie’s mom works on the Ashton estate as a maid and Leo is the son of the head of the estate. Ellie and Leo essentially grow up together, but Ellie has her sights set on Felix, Leo’s brother, and thinks that Leo is bossy and wound too tight. She quickly discovers that Felix is not the golden boy he seems to be and she decides to live her life without ever falling in love again. But as I’m sure you’ve guessed, Leo eventually brings her back to love.

I found the writing to be rather rushed. There was a long timeline to cover and I often felt that I was just settling into a time in Ellie’s life and then it would skip to a few months or years later. I also sometimes wanted to scream at Ellie because some of her choices were beyond infuriating. But in spite of all that, I loved the relationship between Ellie and Leo. Throw in the suspense of a classic kidnapping and some rather steamy scenes and you’ve got yourself a book!

Overall, this was an easy, feel-good read and I really enjoyed it. Thank you to NetGalley for providing a free copy!

The book has a fun start and I really enjoyed the first half but around then it runs out of steam. By then both characters know that they are in love with each other, at least Leo has loved her forever, so where do we go from here? Fill up the pages with blank: put in some random skiing trip, a sex scene or two, add a kidnapping, and the book becomes such a cliche. I started skipping pages but around the kidnapping I gave up on the book.

I think the story would have worked and all the shortcomings can be forgiven if the suspense went on a bit longer, Leo and Ellies's characters more developed, and the build-up of their feelings was gradually introduced until the big end when the all hidden feelings are revealed. The emotional and sexual build-up usually works wonders because by the end the readers are just dying for this love story to work out. However, here the build-up ends before it evens starts somewhere around the middle.

Thus to sum up, the story is a complete cliche:

- a heir and a future billionaire CEO falls in love with the housekeeper's daughter when she is 16 and even 7 years later he is madly in love with her. How often does this happen in a real life?

- The personal chauffeur, the housekeeper and their families are treated as the family of the estate and are invited to the family Christmas. The housekeeper is treated as a close friend by the lady of the manor.

- The education and upkeep of the housekeeper's daughter is paid fully at the most prestigious university for architecture. Keep dreaming.

- Once Ellie graduates and gets her first job, she starts a relationship with the company's CEO. How inappropriate is that? Can you really imagine a junior staff sleeping with CEO at any company?

- Once Ellie realizes that her feelings to the architect CEO are not that deep, she jumps into the hands of another CEO (aka Leo) who has been in love with her since she was 16. I guess that no other women could have matched her 16 year old's tanned long legs, blond hair and height. As Leo barely knows her character, his feelings should be extremely shallow and so many blond tall women with long legs are available to him. His devoted love for Ellie seems forced as much as unreal.

- Leo, the second CEO, has such a super sensitive personality, all the kindness and empathy, and all the time on his hands - there is no way he would succeed in a CEO role of a billionaire company.

- Ellie, a recent graduate with only 2 years of work experience is hired as a main architect to build the headquarters of a billionaire company. Of course this billionaire company belongs to Leo. Why do we have to send these false messages to young people to think that one can rise quickly and up without much effort? Two years of career is barely learning the ropes.

- Heroine is someone who is natural genius in her field and the most beautiful woman with long legs. So the rest of us with average length legs, above average looks and long hard worked careers there is really no hope in life.

- Add a private jet here and holidays or dinners at fine restaurants, of course, all free to the heroine. Oh I just love the life of people in fiction. As if rich people in a real life subsidize everyone around them.

Why cannot we have books about relationships and love stories that happen in real life? At least once, please no private jets and no billionaire CEO. Billionaire CEOs do not marry their secretaries or housekeeper's daughters and you wouldn't want to date them anyway because most of them are sociopaths and definitely not kind, empathic people. A kind person would never succeed as a CEO of a billionaire company.

I know that some unhappily married women need fantasy in order to escape their lives, but what happen to the romance and stories that make sense. I know it might not be fair to Sophie Penhaligon because my rant is against the whole genre not just her book.

Thanks NetGalley for a free copy in exchange of the honest review.