This was incredible! I loved it, I couldn't put it down, I even liked that it was a slow burn with a grumpy hero, a great read.

I’m not sure if “Make it Sweet” is a sequel to “Dear Enemy” (which I loved a whole lot). The story revolved around Emma and Lucian. Emma Maron who’s been booted out from a popular TV series abruptly, and is now licking her wounds in a private estate where no one can find her. Except that there’s also someone else famous there in hiding, Lucian Osmond, a famous ex-hockey player who’s also licking his own wounds. sounded all better when the familiar names from the previous book started coming back such as Delilah and Macon.

What I like about the book:

The teasing and the building chemistry between the Emma and Lucian 💃🕺 were fantastic. Their characters were well developed.
The side characters were likable too, and hope they get their story too.
The author was able to segue Lucian’s character into a patisserie chef and manage Emma’s character into a very mature person and not a damsel in distress.
What I didn’t like:

The romance took a long time to develop (I must be in some sort of hot and in the mood). Please note that this is a very slow burn 🔥 type of story. I was in 60% of the story that I finally got to see some good action.
There was a lot of hesitation especially on Lucian’s part.
The story didn’t keep my attention, and there were times that I was skipping through the pages. However, somehow I was still hooked and kept coming back to finish it.

Overall, its a good read and I’m giving it 4 Stars because it was very well written for a slow burn type of book.

An ARC was provided by the Author and Publisher for an honest Review.

Lucian and Emma help each other heal!

If this book doesn’t make you hungry, you are a stronger person than I am!

Make It Sweet is all about two injured characters where Lucian Osmond is trying to find his future after retiring from hockey due to a brain injury. Luc is staying at his grandmother Amalie’s estate doing repairs and getting over his fiancé ending the engagement when he couldn’t play anymore. He meets actress Emma Maron who is trying to get over the shock of her character being killed off and finding her boyfriend cheating on her and trying to move on with her career.

I love Kristen Callihan’s writing but when she writes a hero that bakes French pastries put this one over the top for me and Make It Sweet is related to Dear Enemy where Emma is Saint’s costar from Dark Castle.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It is the story of Emma, an actress who rose to fame playing Princess Anya on a Game of Thronesesque television show. Her life quickly falls apart when the show kills her character off and she catches her boyfriend in bed with another woman. She needs sanctuary and her grandmother makes arrangements for her to go stay with her old friend on her estate in California.

There she meets Lucian Osmond, a former hockey star forced out of the game due to a concussion. The similarities in the loss of their careers and feeling adrift draw these two closer together. They have a budding relationships with many twists and turns.

As usual Kristen Callihan has delivered a wonderful romance with an eccentric cast of characters. The dialogue is humorous and the character development is excellent and realistic. I would highly recommended this book.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review.

Make it Sweet by Kristen Callihan is heartfelt, intense, and sexy. The heroine and hero—Emma and Lucian meet at a time when they are both healing and struggling to find their way. Their personal struggles were authentic and how the characters navigated them was so well-written. This is a novel that will quietly suck you in until you can’t imagine putting it down until you reach the very last page. Make it Sweet by Kristen Callihan is an emotional and romantic treat that will make readers fall in love and develop intense cravings for French patisseries.

Make It Sweet was such an amazing story and I enjoyed it a lot! I instantly got into the story and was very interested in Emma and Lucian, the main characters. I really liked how they started as grumpy/sunshine and bickering all the time, but as they spent more time together their feelings for each grew. Their chemistry was intense and this book had so much angst!! Apart from their relationship, I liked them as individuals too, they were both going through a difficult time in their professional and personal lives but were able to get better together. As Dear Enemy, this book takes place in the same "universe" and Macon and Delilah were mentioned a few times so that was cool too! I also liked the secondary characters and hope we'll see more of them in future books!

Make it Sweet by Kristen Callihan a flavoursome four-star read. This could have been so close to a five-star read, but it seemed to drag a little, overall a great story though. I had read Dear Enemy but if I hadn’t I don’t think I would be missing much, as we get to see the wedding, and catch up, but the characters from the first story only as part they aren’t a massive part. I wish so hard I could run away to Rosemont myself, I would happily share with Emma, Lucian and his family especially his grandma and Sal, they would definitely make the stay so much fun. Lucian has some issues of his own, he so easily could have died on that ice, that has to shake you to the core, but the thing is would it shake you hard enough? Emma was the strongest of the pair in my eyes though, to have been so open and revealed to the public in such a private manner and then had her legs knocked from under her, if not more of her, while she hides to lick her wounds and have some tasty treats life becomes so much more. But what happens when the rug gets pulled again, I for one know I wouldn’t be strong enough to come back fighting. For that Emma is the strongest for me, but I know I wouldn’t mind tasting some of Lucians yummy treats.

I loved this book. It was one of the best reads of 2020 for me. a hockey player (former) and an actress (recently let go from her show) both healing from their careers and lows in their personal life, come together with some intervention from a loving buy nosy grandmother.

This was a fun read with a spin. A hockey player who loves to cook. An actress who is finding out who she is. I loved this smart and enjoyable read. So much !!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down! If you love chef/baking romances, I think this one is going to make you swoon. This was the first Kristen Callihan contemporary I read, and now I get what so many of you have been raving about.

Make it Sweet is Kristen Callihan's follow up to Dear Enemy, with the MCs from that book making a reappearance as secondary characters to Emma and Lucian's story. Emma is the lead actress on a hit Game of Thrones-esque tv show. In a shocking twist, her character gets the ax, and she catches her boyfriend screwing a waitress on the same day. She retreats to a secluded estate in Southern California to regroup and figure out her next move.

Lucian is a former star hockey player who left the game due to Post Concussion Syndrome. He is living on his family's estate, helping fix it up, hiding from facing his life without hockey, and baking fancy patisserie which his world-famous French chef grandfather taught him. Then Emma shows up, and they are immediately drawn to one another.

This story had so many tropes I love: grumpy x sunshine, matchmaking grandma, forced proximity. And even those I didn't know I wanted, like how Lucian sublimates all his desire and love for Emma through his baking. I am not a food-romance reader in general, but this one was great.

I adored the setting of Rosemont. It felt very fantasy 1920's California, and the perfect place for a love story. The secondary characters were great additions, and it tied neatly to Delilah and Macon's story (though this can totally be read as a stand-alone book).

I do think this book is Lucien's story, at the heart of it. Emma has some issues she brings to the table, but they seemed easily resolved in comparison to Lucian's. He had the most to overcome to reach the HEA, and he was also the one standing in his own way most of the time. Callihan gives us so much of his back story and friends and family as characters in comparison to Emma. (Though, I have to LOL at his grandfather being a famous french baker, his father being the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, his grandmother was a famous fashion model, and he and his cousin are famous hockey players - and Emma a famous actress. There are no non-famous people in this story, lol).

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I loved this. It was really easy to read and it was a great form of escapism. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Would love to read more by her in future.

“I received a free, advance copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review”

‘Make it sweet’ wasn’t the first book that I read from the writer Kristen Callihan, in the past I have read other books of her. I especially enjoyed her football series, ‘Game on’. So when I read the blurb of this book and discovered that the main male character was an ex-hockey player, I was instantly intrigued (I lOVE reading about ice hockey players) and I really wanted to read it. So I was very excited when I got the chance!

Although ‘Make it sweet’ is a standalone story, I did discover during my read that there is a link between this book and ‘Dear enemy’. Namely, Emma is Macon’s co-star in the TV series ‘Dark castle’ (Macon, who is the main male character in the book ‘Dear enemy’). So, readers who have read the book ‘Dear enemy’ will be happy to know that they will see Macon and Delilah in this story too. I must confess that I haven’t read ‘Dear enemy’ but after reading and loving this story so much, I will definitely read ‘Dear enemy’ very soon too.

(Okay, the following comparison may sound strange BUT when you have read the book you will totally understand why I used it here and you will never look at pastry the same way again!)

Reading ‘Make it sweet’ was like watching my favourite baking TV show, where the baker/pastry chef used simple ingredients to bake something good but it wasn’t until the end that you realized that you had just watched the making of a beautiful and delicious creation. And that was the case with this story too, the story started good and the more I read, the more I got invested into the story and the characters. But what made this story great, was ‘the end’ (the last chapters of the story) for me. The last part was emotional, beautiful and felt so real to me. You could really feel the love, the heartbreak and the conflicted emotions there.

You got both POV’s in the story. Emma and Lucian were both wonderful main characters. Emma was this optimistic, funny, sassy and sweet character and Lucian was a real grumpy, quiet male character but what he didn’t say in words, he did say with his delicious baking creations. I really loved that side of him, it was so opposite of his reputation of tough hockey player. But if you looked deeper, you could see the same focus and dedication that he used in both things.

For me personally, ‘Make it sweet’ did have a different vibe to it than the writer’s other series ‘Game on’. I think that the difference was in the fact that ‘Game on’ was more a new adult series and this one wasn’t.
The story had his emotional moments but it was never too heavy, the tone was light all the way through the story, especially because of the funny banter between the main characters and the secondary characters. The main characters Emma and Lucian really grew emotional and I loved how they supported each other and were honest with each other. The story was a bit of a slow burn but once they had sex, it was steamy and hot.

‘Make it sweet’ was a wonderful story that I enjoyed very much.

Lucian is an ex-pro hockey player working to rehab his grandmother's estate in California after quitting the game due to concussion syndrome. His ex-fiancée also decided it wasn't worth sticking around if he was no longer playing. He meets Emma, an actress on a popular tv series whose starring role was recently cut literally (her character gets beheaded), when he goes to collect a guest due to stay at his grandmother's estate at the airport. He is surprised, because he recognizes her, as he watched her show. What he doesn't know is that Emma not only lost her job, but discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her and she is coming to the estate to lick her wounds in private. After they meet at the airport, driving triggers a migraine for Lucian, one of the symptoms of his illness. After asking to stop on the drive to look at a view, Emma makes up a story about being car sick to get him to allow her to drive.

As Emma stays on the estate, the couple get to know each other and what she doesn't initially realise is that Lucian is the chef responsible for all of the delicious treats she's being served from the kitchen. Trust me, you will crave French pastries while you read this book! Later, they go to a wedding of her co-star and get caught up in the romance of it all, yet neither of them thought to bring condoms. and they end up fooling around. Lucian gets caught up in thinking he's not good enough for Emma and he emotionally backs away.

This book has a delicious, slow burn quality to it which I liked very much. Even after they get together physically, Lucian and Emma still have a way to go and face trials along the way. It is refreshing to see characters who struggle with insecurity and get their HEA.

Another excellent book by this author. Wonderful banter between the two MCs. The book does feature own of my favorite "tropes", the meddling grandmother. This book is part rebound and part growing up. Emma and Lucian are both going through some things with their careers and personal lives. Lucian is a grump when the book starts but by the end Emma has managed to pull him out of it.

My rating: 3.5-3.75 stars

Make It Sweet is a sweet, enjoyable, and delicious read.


(I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions and expressed here are my own.)

Ozzy (Lucian Osmond) is in his prime year; he has everything he could have asked for- a fiancee, a career, two-time Stanley Cup winner too.
Life seemed blissful for him until the day where he learned that he had Concussion Syndrome and had to quit his dream job.
Emma Maron was Princess Anya to everyone who watched her on TV. She was regal on-screen and was happy with life. Then one day, she learns that she is no longer Princess Anya because she is getting cut-off from the series without any prior notice.
When she thinks life could never get worse, she finds her boyfriend cheating on her. She leaves this guy and goes to Rosemont to recover from her heartbreak.

After quitting Hockey, Lucian goes back to his grandmother's place Rosemont in California. Guess where Emma goes to recuperate her heart? Yes, she ends up at Rosemont and meets the ever grumpy yet hot grandson of her grandmother's friend.
The story then deals with these two people overcoming their past together and to find new opportunities in life.


Pros
Even though there was nothing new in this story, it portrayed the characters well.
Lucian was unlike any other athlete-characters I have read so far. He wasn't cocky or too self-absorbed- like the usual sports guy in romance novels- he was shy about things like his cooking or receiving compliments. For once, it felt good to see this narrative in the story; not many sports-romance novels have this type of lead-character in them, so it felt nice to read it here. He was grumpy and cynical because he had to quit hockey, which he was his passion.
However, I'd not blame him; quitting one's dream/ job is not easy. Even if one quits their dream/job, the path that lays ahead is the toughest because you have to rebuild something from scratch again. I think Lucien brought that transformation well. It wasn't easy for him, but he found that he enjoyed cooking and a man who cooks yummy-delicacies has a special place in my heart.

Compared to Lucian, Emma recovered from her past faster. Maybe because she had other series or movies that she could work on, and didn't have to change or quit her career like Lucian had to. She was humble and funny most of the time. She was relaxed and enjoyed Lucien's cooking; they complement each other.


The writing was captivating; I got carried away by the descriptions and the imagery in the book. It was sensual and delectable.

Cons

Lucian's back-and-forth confused me at times. He gets close to Emma and then decides to push her away. It happened at least twice, and I find it exhausting whenever a character does that in a story.
Emma had a rough childhood, but we never get more information about it.
This would have made the story a wee bit angsty, which I expected of this book.



Overall, this was an entertaining book with cute characters and mouth-watering desserts. If you are looking for reading romance with food and a guy who cooks excellent dishes, clubbed with a less-intense story, pick Make It Sweet right away.

I love Kristen Callihan's novels. Like her other books, this was funny and sweet with a good amount of seriousness.. I hope that we'll see more of these characters in upcoming books.

From the moment I started reading Make it Sweet I could picture the environment of the story..I quite happily lost myself in the sights and smells described by Emma, and the heart and soul put into them by Lucian. I adored that even though they were fighting their physical attraction to each other,the thread of their emotional attraction was woven into almost all their interactions, sometime subtly, sometimes not.
I really felt like the author kept the characters true to themselves throughout,even when it would have been easier to add certain elements as very cliche drama. That was a very refreshing change. I also really enjoyed the parts the extended family played in the story, particularly Sal,who is a treasure I wish I could borrow in reality!
Overall,this was a really lovely, quick read full of honesty and optimism. I've found myself instantly clicking on Kristen Callihan's books, and this one is yet another hit, and I'm sure my next click will be too.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for and honest review.

I was so excited to receive an ARC of Make it Sweet, as I really love Kristen Callihan, and she writes some amazing sports romance.

Emma is the star of Dark Castle as Princess Anya, until she has her read through for her what she determines, will be her final season and the perpetual rug pulled out from her. She goes to hide to Rosemont, a beautiful and quiet estate in California wherein she meets the very broody former hockey great Lucian Osmond (or Luc Oz Osmond as her was known). Their meet cute was quite funny.

Emma really wasn't trying to find anyone, especially after being axed from her show and then finding her ex-fiance getting it on with someone else. Lucian, well he just wants to hide out in and help his grandmother at Rosemont while he's busy feeling sorry for himself since he cannot play hockey anymore.

Two unlikely people destined to meet each other. While Lucian really just wanted to feel sorry for himself, it was Emma and her sassy mouth that got him to smile again. Lucian was able to make Emma believe all men aren't dogs like her ex.

This was a very sweet love story with a few hiccups here and there, but Ms. Callihan delivered a wonderful story. I am so happy to see her writing again. I hope to see more of her words.

*An ARC was provided via Net Galley for an honest review.

There’s a lot to like about “Make it Sweet”, by Kristen Callihan (Montlake Romance): Lucian and Emma are both celebrities but incredibly average and humble people; their romance feels hot, tender and sweet, with genuine fondness, complicity and humor pairing with the usual sex scenes.
I liked seeing the romance grow and it felt good being surprised by these refreshing characters, their banter and chemistry was very appealing.
Lucian is a gorgeous wounded hero, a tough hockey player with a soft side and a hidden passion with which he woos the heroine in the most unexpected and delicious ways.
I love a grumpy hero who doesn’t take himself too seriously and I loved how Lucian grunted, snarled and brooded but also how he showed affection, tenderness and a sweet shyness that was made him so endearing.
Emma’s kindness and sensitiveness make her a very down-to-earth and relatable character.
The drama was not excessive but our hero was really hurting and his condition is thoroughly displayed.
Overall, an entertaining read that could be shorter and avoid the hero’s very contrived idea/twist about his hockey career by the end of the story.

I liked this a lot more than I anticipated after reading the synopsis. I wish that the dessert explanations had been in the front of the book and not the back because I kept Googling them. 😂

I'm also wondering if Saint and Delilah have a book as well? It almost felt like this one was revisiting their story and wrapping up with the wedding.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I didn’t quite know that “Make it Sweet” was a tangential sequel to “Dear Enemy” which I liked a lot…all the better when the familiar names started coming back. In this case, the link to the first book is Macon Saint’s co-star Emma Maron who’s been booted out from the show unceremoniously and is now licking her wounds in a private estate where no one can find her. Except that there’s also someone else famous there who’s in hiding: Lucian Osmond, a famous ex-hockey player who’s recuperating and licking his own wounds in private.

And that is what carries the entire plot for a time. And it was one that made me a little disconnected from it reading about the fictional lives of two famous characters who live the high life yet are unhappy about their own…and in many ways, behave like teens trying to navigate their way around growing up.

Kristen Callihan piles on the sexual attraction hot and heavy from the very start—along with detailed descriptions of each protagonist’s inability to breathe because of the other’s attractiveness ad nauseam—which laid the direction in which I thought the book was going to go: mostly one where Emma and Lucian fantasise about each other’s hot bodies and getting flustered as a result even as they try avoiding each other (we all know how that’s going to go, obviously).

‘Make It Sweet’ definitely took a bit of a different turn than I thought it would despite the blurb. For a chapter that started with the sweaty, heart-pounding scene of competitive sport being played, it was soon replaced by a sweet-ish lull that concentrated on an ex-hockey player who kept on baking and showing off his delicious treats to Emma (in secret, of course) which made this feel more like a lush, erotic travel-romance-and-a-fling with some food porn thrown in sort of tale. Callihan does manage to make it mostly engaging, though with a journey that’s so mellow, it’s not that much of a stand-out.