Thank you to NetGalley and Aria & Aries for this ARC.

Liv is absolutely livid. Another guy has ghosted her on an online dating website. Just deleted his entire profile! She had such high hopes for kind Fraser - he was easy on the eye and shared her interests of reading and Mariah Carey songs. This time she is not taking it lying down! He is a chef in the Scottish Highlands and as soon as she has Googled the address she is off in her sister's car, to tell him personally what a cockwomble he is (yes, the word is used). Of course, nothing goes to plan. She drives the car into a snowy ditch in increasingly bad weather, just as she is metres from the hotel/restaurant, has a pratfall, hurts both her ankle and her head and originally pretends to have amnesia when asked her name.

Fraser is gorgeous yet grumpy and not very happy about the sudden guest but doesn't seem to recognise her. His young cousin Effie is ecstatic however, and she and her grandmother Dolly warmly welcome her and give her a bed for the night in the run-down, not open for business hotel, that offers stag heads on walls and bats in a wardrobe as fancy extras. There are also enthusiastic rumours of a ghost called Janet. Then the snowstorm gets worse and a newly-wed couple and a snotty influencer need to be given refuge too. Liv gets so swept up with everything that she never finds the time to confront Fraser about his apparent ghosting of her.

I loved all the quirky supporting characters - bubbly Effie and feisty Dolly are a hoot, then there are elderly well-intentioned Minnie and arrest-happy Robbie Williams - the police officer, not the other one! The menagerie is completed by sock-loving Jock'O the dog and music-loving Ginger the cow whose independent streak is strong. In other words, she likes to escape!

This book covers the week before Christmas and gets a lot of story in. We learn of Effie's and Fraser's respective heartbreaks and get a restaurant off the ground. Effie also has a love interest who isn't all he seems. There is a mountain of snow, mistletoe, comforting log fires, a toppling Christmas tree and all the other trimmings. 

I absolutely loved this book. It's ruined me for alI other Christmas books. This had it all - banter, shenanigans, graffiti, awful exes and two slowly developing romances.

I had every intention of stopping my reading once it got to midnight but the chapters are so nice and short that I suffered a bout of "just one more chapter"-itis until - whoops - I had finished it! What a great, fun holiday read. It will make you laugh and warm the cockles of your heart at the same time.