Humping For The Holidays | 12.16.22
I'm sorry for the direction of this week's alliterative title, but not sorry enough to change it!!
Merry [almost] Christmas!! This is my absolute favorite time of year, despite now living in Los Angeles and not getting the experience the best part of the season (aka chunky sweaters and snow), so of course I have been reading plenty of holiday romances to try and make up for that. It may be sunny outside my window, but in my heart and on the page, it’s a winter wonderland, baybee!
In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren. I believe this is the first romance I’ve recommended so far with magical/supernatural elements! I’m currently in a phase of my reading adventures where I’m kind of actively avoiding books that aren’t straightforward fiction, but due to my love of all things Christina Lauren, I checked this one out and fell head over heels.
The supernatural element? A time loop. The setting? A cabin where heroine Maelyn Jones, her family, and their close-knit group of family friends gather every year for Christmas. The situation? After hooking up with the wrong family friend (Theo) despite her long-standing crush on Andrew (his brother) and discovering that the beloved Christmas cabin is being sold after this season, she’s given a surprise second chance when, upon driving away after the holiday, time resets, and she’s back at the beginning of the trip. Will she make it out of this awkward loop, get the right guy in bed, AND save their favorite winter getaway so their ragtag group has a reason to see each other year after year? Time (and then the same time again) will tell!
Rating: 5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Loving the Mountain Man by Adriana Anders. This is the third in a series of fairly short dark romances (I believe the first book in the series started as a novella and then was expanded into a… long novella? Short novel? Unclear), and my favorite of the bunch. After a near-death experience followed by a daring rescue, our lovebirds Christa (a city girl marketing professional) and Micah (a disabled vet living off the grid) are stuck in Micah’s tiny mountain cabin until a massive Christmas storm clears enough for Christa to make it back into town. There’s immediate attraction, because she’s adorable and he’s a ripped survivalist, but both are hesitant to act on it. Micah’s naturally worried he’d be taking advantage of Christa because he not only rescued her from certain death but is also her sole access to shelter to weather out the storm. Christa’s worried that she’s a little too curvy, soft, and uninteresting for a rugged hottie like Micah.
We’ve got an amputee hero, a curvy heroine, a nuanced exploration of consent and power dynamics in professional and sexual situations, and an extremely hot forced proximity snowed in setup. Honestly, the only reason this book lost half a point in my rating is because it’s too short! I wanted WAY more of these two repressed goofballs! And having read nearly all of the longer-form Adriana Anders books, I know I would not have been disappointed.
Rating: 4.5/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Mangos and Mistletoe by Adriana Herrera. When two queer Dominican bakers with very different relationships to kitchen skills and their culture end up paired off during a holiday televised baking competition in Edinburgh, they must learn to find common ground in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds. It doesn’t help that there’s an instant attraction neither of them is ready for or hopeful about the future of. Especially since standoffish chef Kiskeya is based on the west coast and running out of time to find a new gig to maintain her green card in the US while sunshiney home cook Sully is settled in New York.
This is another longish-novella/short-ish novel, perfect for an afternoon where you just need an escape. I loved the thoughtful exploration about the different ways you can get pigeon-holed in your profession, and the varied ways ambitious women deal with that limitation, as well as the extremely hot public sex scene near the end of act 2.
Rating: 4/5
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’m taking off to actually celebrate the holiday with my family, but don’t you worry, I’ll be back the week of New Years with some Extremely Organized Heroines while I write my own New Years Resolutions for 2023.
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!