I loved this one so much. Literally it was so so good. It had me swooning and I probably finished it with in a day.. my ears were hurting from having the earbuds in for so long.

Rom com perfection at its finest right here. I loved that it therapy rep, widow, the FMC pretty much kept to herself., grief rep.. my only con would be the repeated use of Mike Martin the MMC FULL name, that kinda drove me batty but the book was so good I just rolled my eyes and kept on listening.

The narrator did a fantastic job and loved how she brought the whole story to life.

5/5 stars

*3.5 stars*
Canadian Boyfriend was such a great listen. I loved the narrators! Their voices fit this story so well.

These characters were easy to love and feel for. Aurora’s growth and character development is very realistic. It didn’t feel rushed for the sake of the story. I enjoyed how positively therapy is portrayed in this book! It’s always nice to read a book that shines light on therapy. I do think that Mike overreacted at the end. I feel like the story didn’t need that part, but it was wrapped up pretty fast.

The northern lights part was so sweet. I really enjoyed it. Every character was very well written, but I loved Olivia! Especially, her struggles with grieving. It was a very realistic portrayal of a young girl who lost her mother.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. Would definitely recommend for a quick, entertaining read. Thanks NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the early listening copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This audiobook was everything. EVERYTHING. Joshua Jackson as my middle age hockey playing main character in Minnesota is giving me grown up mighty ducks vibes. He reads audiobooks as well as he acts. And I give his performance 5/5! The female narrator was a hit as well. I thought the conflict in the story seemed a bit overworked, it didn’t seem as big of a deal as it was made out. But it’s fiction! Great book, great narration. I’ve already recommended it to friends!

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy. I really enjoyed this and will be getting copies for my shop.

Jenny Holiday has a natural way for making you fall for her characters! CANADIAN BOYFRIEND was sweet and sexy but also a heartfelt story that made me care for the characters as if I personally knew them. The way in which Aurora and Mike connected, how their relationship grew, was just perfection.

This book certainly packed a lot in, from fun tropes to heavier topics. I think overall the author did a great job at giving us depth, delving into hard topics in a real and relatable way, and still making us cheer for that happily ever after.

Great chemistry, great banter and a fun ride! And on the plus side, the audiobook being narrated by Joshua Jackson was a treat. It needs to be repeated. :)

This was such an empowering emotional story.
It was such a wonderful story that pulls you right in and has you invested fully into Aurora and Mike’s lives.
Both Aurora & Mike have emotional trauma that they are trying to recover from.
This was full of healing, forgiveness, boundaries, compassion and love.
I adored the build up, how they slowly helped each other tear down walls that had been erected to protect, they were safe spaces. I love how it approached two very different types of trauma and they were weaved seamlessly into the story.
I loved Olivia, she was such a raw and real character too.
This had me feeling all the feels.

Thank you to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for the ALC! I had been interested in previous Jenny Holiday books, but this was my first time reading one of her books and I was SO impressed.

Both of the main characters are realized, dynamic and relatable. The relationship between them felt so natural and I loved them together.

All of the heavier topics and emotions were handled extremely well, a man who goes to therapy and understands his privilege?! Incredible. The spice was fine, but I loved the characters so much that I wanted more. This was such an amazing read and Joshua Jackson killed it with the narration.

I read it as an ebook and loved it. Audiobooks are usually not my thing, I find it hard to concentrate and follow the story if I only listen to it and don't read it with my eyes.
What tempted me to try this audio was the male narrator. I had such a crush on Pacey as a teenager :)
Anyway, I listened to most of the audio and found it quite good. Knowing what happens I did manage to follow along more easily.
Overall, a lovely romance both in ebook and audio that I highly recommend.

I loved the narrators! I was enjoying the plot, but I had to stop reading/listening at 17% due to the continual use of the full name “Mike Martin.”

DNF @ 54%

It really says a lot when you're SUPER excited for an audiobook and then it's like pulling teeth to make yourself read it.
And, I must say, the narrators are the ONLY reason that I made it as far as I did. Joshua Jackson should really try to read something else, because I was HERE FOR IT. And I truly enjoyed that neither narrator had to try to do a voice for the opposite gender - as it was read by, what seemed to be, a full cast.

This book had the promise of a cute premise: running into the boy you used as the inspiration for your fake high school boyfriend later in life? Like - what are the odds!? So I was really excited to see how Holiday would take that and run away with it. As I was reading, though, I found it hard to get into the story. And, honestly, the breaks where the diary entries were took me out of the narrative - which was probably the opposite of their intended purpose.

Once I realized I knew exactly what the third-act breakup would be, and it made no sense to me, I knew I had to DNF, and I don't regret it.
You might like this one - but it didn't work for me.

If you do go for, I highly recommend the audio!

Do yourself a favor and listen to this one! The narrators are Emily Ellet AND….Joshua Jackson. That’s right Joshua Jackson, Pacey Whitter or as someone of a certain age knows Mighty Duck himself Charlie Conway. Anyway, a hockey romance narrated by Joshua Jackson? Talk about perfect casting!
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Aurora spent her high school days as a ballerina and her free time working at Mall of America. When she meets a handsome hockey player from Canada she gets an idea. She met him for all of five minutes but she created a fake boyfriend as an excuse to cover her social awkwardness and perfect way out of social activities.
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Fast forward years later Aurora is now a dance teacher somehow teaching none other than pro hockey player, Mike’s daughter. Mike, the hockey player she met in the mall all those years ago. Fate brought these two together. This was a delightful romance that had me rooting for them.
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Huge thank you to @hachetteaudio and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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After really enjoying my arc of Jenny Holiday’s Canadian Boyfriend I saw the news that Joshua Jackson would be narrating Mike Martin’s part in the audiobook. And then I saw the arc offer and jumped on it. And now I have mixed feelings about it.

I’ll start with what I liked. I liked, really liked, the duet format. I want more of this please. It is imperfect, you could really tell at times that the dialogue was recorded at different times and probably different spaces, but life is imperfect and I liked the format enough to tolerate the sounds differences. I thought Emily Ellet did a great job narrating Aurora and the other women and girls’ voices.

I thought Joshua Jackson was mostly fine. He has a lovely voice. It’s warm and charming. I could listen to him all day. I might have liked his performance better if I hadn’t already read the book and formed some definite ideas about Mike. My biggest problem was that in moments when I thought he should be going big with emotions he stayed calm. He didn’t give Mike much of an emotional range, which made me like Mike less. Canadian Boyfriend gets into some very sticky power dynamics territory and I found myself having a harder time with Mike’s behavior as narrated by Joshua Jackson than I did when I was the one interpreting him in my head.

I still enjoyed it, I mostly enjoyed Joshua Jackson as a narrator, and I would love to see more duet narrations.

I saw the title Canadian Boyfriend so of course I was interested to read this book! And one of the narrators is Joshua Jackson! Amazing! I listened to the audiobook and it was really cute. Both narrators, Joshua Jackson and Emily Ellet were great. It was so cute how Mike was a hockey player from Winnipeg whose Dad owns a Tim Hortons. I appreciated the content warning at the beginning of the book. This book does deal with disordered eating and grief. I liked the dual POV and emphasis on therapy for both of them to deal with each of their issues. There is a nice mention of Vancouver! And the part about how to order at Tim’s was really fun! Note there is some spice in this book.

This was my first Jenny Holiday novel and totally loved it. Canadian Boyfriend was a very sweet, emotional, and heartfelt story about Aurora (Rory) Evans who is a dance teacher and former professional ballerina and Mike Martin, a Canadian pro hockey player. This book opens with teenage Rory who worked as a barista part time at the mall and met a handsome young Canadian hockey player. Rory is so smitten by Mike when she meets him when she waited on him at the coffee shop, she worked at the she based an imaginary Canadian boyfriend to avoid embarrassments from not having any date for any social situations.

Fast forward to thirteen years, Rory meets her Canadian boyfriend again but this time he is the father to one of her dance students. Mike is a recent widower struggling with raising his daughter and juggling work. Rory didn’t know that Olivia, one of her favorite students, was the daughter of Mike Martin, since Olivia’s mom was always the one involved with dance until she died. Rory remembers Mike, however Mike does not, which makes her question if he is the handsome hockey player she met years ago. Mike and Olivia develop a friendship which turns into some confusing territory due to their chemistry together.

I absolutely thought this book was such a delight to listen to. I was lucky to get an ARC of this audiobook and liked it so much I preordered a physical copy. I totally enjoyed FMC’s personality, her struggles with anxiety, panic attacks and her history of eating disorder due to the demands of ballet. I thought her character was well rounded and incredibly relatable and almost realistic, including the made-up boyfriend part.

The voice acting for the FMC was excellent and incredibly talented. She conveyed all the emotions of Rory and all the other female characters she took on. The voice acting of Joshua Jackson, the MMC was impeccable. I honestly signed up for this ARC knowing that he was the narrator and I believe he was made to read for Mike Martin. Both him and the MMC are Canadian and have a love for hockey. Joshua really made the Canadian mannerisms authentic, and this audiobook was made better for it. I honestly think both these actors were flawless in embodying the characters and it totally enhanced my appreciation of this book.

I want to thank #Netgalley and #Hachetteaudio for providing my with this audio ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The title of this drew me in, and the deep, heartfelt explorations made me stay. Canadian Boyfriend is a term I’m familiar with growing up, so I was expecting a light hearted, funny story, but this was so much more. I really enjoyed the exploration around grief and trauma. I did find the fake boyfriend storyline sometimes a bit much, especially in relation to the third act break-up, but the connection between the main characters and the other topics throughout made up for it.
As a Joshua Jackson fan, I was very excited for the narration and it didn’t disappoint. His and Emily Ellet’s voices were perfect to tell this story.
Thank you Hachette Audio, Forever, for the audio copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was just what I wanted in a hockey romance book. It was so cute and the banter was amazing. The narrators were amazing!

So amazing! the narrators were so emotional and really bounce well with each other for dual pov. their voice acting Brought the characters to life and they made the reading experience so enjoyable.

Canadian Boyfriend is a book I requested on a whim to fulfill a readathon bingo prompt. If not for that, this book never would have been on my radar. And I would have missed out. The story was charming, cute and fun, and I haven’t felt this giddy about a reading in a long time!

Aurora Evans and Mike Martin are both down on their luck. Mike is struggling with the loss of his wife and caring for their daughter, and Aurora is stuck in an apartment she can’t afford after a break up. As Aurora is Mike’s daughter, Olivia’s, dance teacher, Mike sees an opportunity for them to help each other out. She can help with Olivia while he’s on the road for his job (as a HOCKEY PLAYER,) and he can provide her with a live-in apartment, helping her save up some money for a new place. This is one of those adorable stories where the characters are in a relationship from the get go, they just don’t realize it. It’s obvious pretty early on that Mike and Rory are made for each other. Just not to them.

There was so much to like about both of these characters. They each spent a lot of time self-reflecting, and while I appreciated it from both of their points of view, I really loved it from Mike’s. After the death of his wife, he finds out his marriage wasn’t going in the direction he thought. Instead of marinating in bitterness, he takes the time to think about it and realizes the contribution he made in the way things were going. Rory spent a lot of time dealing with the impact her childhood had on her - specifically her mother’s unrealistic expectations and lack of support. And even more to appreciate was that this wasn’t tied up in a nice little bow at the end of the book. Mike and Rory challenged each other in ways that made them better people. They didn’t just ask themselves the tough questions. They extended those to each other, as well. With the way Rory and Mike are brought together, his daughter plays a prominent part of this story. A lot of scenes did center around her, but it fit the narrative, and it never felt like it was overwhelming other aspects of the story.

A few things to take note of - this book was quite time-jumpy. You would be in December, and then the next chapter might start with ‘By the time April rolled around…” This didn’t bother me. If anything it made the timeline of their relationship more believable and highlighted the fact that real life sometimes brings things to a standstill. My only criticism of this book would be the third act. I found the conflict to be predictable, contrived and weak. It had no place in Rory and Mike’s relationship, and I couldn’t figure out why Rory was so torn up about it. That part didn’t feel authentic to me. Having said that - I loved the rest of the story so much that I think it was worth the read. If you enjoy a good sports romance where the characters take the time to get to know each other and fall in love, I think you’ll enjoy Canadian Boyfriend.

| Narration |

Canadian Boyfriend was narrated by Joshua Jackson and Emily Ellet. For those who don't know, Joshua Jackson starred in The Mighty Ducks movie franchise about a hockey team, so it was easy to picture this as an extension of his life as a grown man. He did a fantastic job narration this, and I hope he does a lot more narration in the future. Emily Ellet did a wonderful job as well. She reminded me a lot of Virginia Rose, so if you like Virginia's narration, I think you'll like Emily's. They both had great intonation and seemed to really get the characters. I think they elevated an already wonderful story. If you have the opportunity to listen, I recommend you go that route.

This was an ARC from NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

When Aurora "Rory" Evans was a lonely teenager, she ran into a handsome Canadian hockey player while she was selling coffee at the Mall of America. She took his name and pretended to have an actual Canadian boyfriend, making her loneliness and ostracism seem more bearable, because even if she had been invited to things, she wouldn't have been able to come, since she was probably visiting her boyfriend, in Canada. And obviously, he couldn't come to school dances or her ballet recitals, living in Canada and all. To keep up the ruse, she also wrote her fictional boyfriend long letters, basically making them a sort of journal for some difficult years in her life.

Now an adult, having given up on ballet as it was making her sick, Aurora works as a dance teacher in a small town. She still struggles with her years of disordered eating, and occasionally gets panic attacks, but she's doing a lot better and enjoys teaching children the joys of dance. To her great surprise, the tragically widowed Mike Martin, whose daughter comes back to dance classes after some time away (what with the grief and the dead mum and soforth), is none other than the handsome young man she took as inspiration for her fake boyfriend. To her credit, it takes her a while to confirm to herself that the Mike she met as a teenager and this Mike are the same person, but even when she does, she doesn't tell him the truth about her teenage coping mechanism.

Mike loved his wife and is still dealing with a lot of emotions after her sudden death in a car accident. Olivia, Rory's dance student, is his step-daughter and while he's the only father she's ever known, he's had to fight his parents-in-law for custody, which hasn't exactly made the grieving process easier. It's clear that Olivia adores her father, but she's also a tween who lost her mother and is prone to tantrums and sudden outbursts. Dance classes with "Miss Rory" are one of her favourite things. Mike likes that Aurora doesn't fawn over him (unlike many of the dance mums) and he sees the easy rapport she has with Olivia, and when he discovers that Aurora is working multiple jobs to make ends meet, offers to hire her to be Olivia's sort-of nanny while he's off resuming his hockey career.

So the romance here takes a while to develop. Aurora is keeping the secret that she basically used Mike as a template for a fantasy boyfriend for a long time as a teenager, a truth that becomes more difficult to tell the longer she knows him and the closer they become. Mike is also Aurora's employer (she refuses to take a paycheck, but lives in his basement, has access to a car whenever she needs it, and gets health insurance) for a lot of the book, which certainly complicates the situation between them somewhat. Mike also feels like he can't date again until his daughter is older, possibly even until after she's old enough to move out. He doesn't feel like he can introduce a new woman into her life, in case they break up and she would have to deal with losing another person. When they do finally decide to become more than friends, they do address the employer/employee complication, so it's very much not a case of anyone being exploited or taken advantage of.

There's so much to like in this book. The close friendship between Aurora and her best friend (who owns the dance studio where she works). Mike has been in therapy since his wife died, and once Aurora gets health insurance, she can also afford to see a therapist. She has a long list of reasons as to why she needs to, beginning with the relationship with her very controlling mother, who still makes her feel guilty for giving up a career as a dancer, because of all the time and money her mother put into "supporting" her daughter. There's the disordered eating, which still creates problems for her occasionally, although I liked how she tried to get more comfortable with allowing herself sugary things and her anxiety. And after a while, it's actually her complicated feelings about her relationship with Mike.

By the way, notice how I keep calling the male protagonist simply Mike in my review? My major complaint about this book, the main reason I cannot give it five stars, even though I really enjoyed it and it did so many things well, is that consistently, throughout the entire book, up to and including the epilogue, Aurora calls Mike by his full name. He is Mike Martin EVERY single time she refers to him. I get it when they are still just acquaintances, and he's the father of one of the girls she teaches. But once she moves into his house to take care of his daughter? Once they actually start engaging in spicy recreational activities? Why? Who does that?

I do not call or think of my husband as Mark Patterson, he's just Mark. Possible exception if I have to fill out official paperwork or something, then I guess I'd use his full name. Why, Aurora? What is your deal? What is up with that? This strange quirk started bothering me about halfway through the book when I really started noticing it, and by the end of the book, I was annoyed enough that it made me want to scream. So no five stars for you, book.

It's been a while since I listened to an audio book with two narrators, but to me, this had an unusual audio format. I'm used to romance novels that have alternating POVs between the protagonists, and if the audiobook has two different narrators, they read the entire chapter from "their" character's POV. That is not the case here. Emily Ellet narrates the chapters where Aurora is the POV character and Joshua Jackson narrates Mike's. In all the chapters, Ellet does all the female voices and Jackson does all the male voices. So it becomes a sort of hybrid between a standard audio book and an audio drama. I really liked it. I've now come across another romance audio that did the same thing. If this is a new trend in dual-POV books in audio, whether romance or not, I'm a big fan. It makes the whole thing a lot more entertaining.

Both narrators for this are really good and make the story more engaging. Normally, I only listen to audiobooks when I'm going to and from work, or am out doing errands, or if I'm doing chores. Now, I kept finding excuses to listen more. I know there was a lot of excitement on social media because THE Joshua Jackson (of Dawson's Creek and Fringe fame) was doing the male part. Is this actually his first time doing audiobooks? If so, he did a good job. I enjoyed the audiobook enough that I used one of my precious Audible credits on it once I finished listening. So even if this was an ARC originally, Ms. Holiday got another sale.

Niggles about Aurora's weird name quirk aside, this was really good and I liked how Mike's character actually got the space and time to work through his many issues because of his wife's death. Neither Aurora nor Mike are magically healed by the love of another, and keep going to therapy because even once they work through the final act complications, both of them need mental health support. In so many books, one or both of the main characters should have intense and comprehensive therapy to deal with their MANY issues - that is not the case here.

I think the next book in the series is about Gretchen, Aurora's best friend. I can't wait. Hopefully, she'll not refer to her romantic partner with first and surname constantly.

Judging a book by its cover: By now, I can pretty much recognise a Leni Kaufmann-illustrated cover at a glance. I always love her covers, and this one is particularly cute. Not entirely sure why the guy (clearly Mike) looks like the twin of Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation, but the pink and the mint-green and Aurora's lovely ballet slippers - the playful way she sits and glances over at Mike. It works for me on every level.

This audiobook was one of my favorites. Joshua Jackson needs to narrate more romance books. He did a fabulous job. I loved the female narrator, she told the story well. I also enjoyed how during different POV each narrator read their portion of the dialogue.

The story was so cute. I figured out the third act conflict immediately and even though I found it silly, it didn’t ruin the book for me. Both characters and the daughter were so sweet and I loved it!