I am struggling with getting my review of Jenny Holiday’s Canadian Boyfriend right. I really enjoyed it. It’s a romance surfing on big waves of grief and trauma. For a big chunk of the book Mike and Aurora have a quasi employer/employee relationship that some people will, reasonably, consider a hard no. I want to put all this up front, because it’s important information for readers, and I don’t want my whole review to be about the things that might put a reader off of a book I enjoyed very much.
Once upon a time teenage Aurora Evans met a hockey player at the Mall of America. He was from Canada. And soon, he was the perfect fake boyfriend, a get-out-of-jail-free card for all kinds of sticky situations. I can’t go to prom. I’m going to be visiting my boyfriend in Canada. He was just what she needed to cover her social awkwardness. He never had to know. It wasn’t like she was ever going to see him again…
Years later, Aurora is teaching kids’ dance classes and battling panic and eating disorders—souvenirs from her failed ballet career—when pro hockey player Mike Martin walks in with his daughter. Mike’s honesty about his struggles with widowhood helps Aurora confront some of her own demons, and the two forge an unlikely friendship. There’s just one problem: Mike is the boy she spent years pretending was her “Canadian boyfriend.”
The longer she keeps her secret, the more she knows it will shatter the trust between them. But to have the life she wants, she needs to tackle the most important thing of all—believing in herself.
At the beginning of the book (after the prologue), Aurora considers herself to be a failed ballerina with a tense relationship with her mother. Mike is grieving the death of his wife and struggling to keep custody of Olivia, his tween step-daughter, and give her stability as she grieves for her mother. Both of them are tackling harmful and hurtful things in their lives – grief, disordered eating, body dysmorphia, self-respect, the expectations of others, betrayal, and fear of abandonment. These are heavy themes, but I think Holiday deftly lightens them without trivializing them.
Mike pays attention to Aurora in part because her dance class (jazz and tap, not ballet) is one of the things that makes his daughter happy. Aurora isn’t sure if Mike is the Mike that she based her fake boyfriend on. They build a relationship with extremes of caution and bursts of profligate abandon. Everyone, including them, is confused about who they are to each other. They are messy. They try so hard not to be and fail. Mike is especially messy, clumsily trying to stay close to Aurora, but also keep her at a distance, ostensibly to protect Olivia, but really to protect himself. Throughout the book, Mike is in therapy, and Aurora starts her own therapy. They grow over the corse of the book, both through their own efforts and in response to each other.
I have very few things that I think are hard lines in romance. Too many times an author has taken a thing I would normally not read and turn it into something I loved. I’m not a huge fan of boss/employee relationships, but here I think Holiday is so clear that Mike tries to make Aurora an employee to keep her physically close while keeping her at an emotional distance. The boss/employee dynamic is not hot, it’s not ok and Holiday is clear that in this case, it’s unhealthy. Along with the themes of grief, self respect and boundaries, there is also an exploration of forgiveness. Mike has to learn to forgive his late wife and himself in a situation where death has cut off the possibility of closure. Aurora has to decide whether she will forgive her mother, when she doesn’t understand the ways in which she has harmed Aurora. I often like third act breakups because they are an opportunity for the relationship to recover from harm. People make mistakes and often it’s ok after some time and repair. From the prologue, you can see the crash coming in Aurora and Mike’s relationship. When that breakup does happen, Holiday has built enough of a foundation between them that it feels like a healthy reset for them.
This was a lovely read. Like a good romance reader, I’m already looking forward to Gretchen’s book please.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Forever and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.
