Erratic's Christmas Romance Book Round-Up 2023 Edition
If you were here last year you may remember me saying I was going to stick with Hallmark movies instead of reading Christmas romance books in 2023. WELL GUESS WHAT. I lied. I watched basically zero Hallmark movies and read approximately three thousand Christmas books because I did not choose self-care. This year's crop of Christmas horrors was worse than last year's which is saying a lot. Even more death, even more mayhem, even less romance, and even more overly dramatic dingalings ruining Christmas for everyone around them but especially ruining it for me. Also, apologies this is super late I was busy doing stuff like "not reading" and "procrastinating" and "washing my hair" and didn't finish the last Christmas book until December 30th.
Just like last year, I've ordered the reviews below based on the rating I gave them on Goodreads from highest to lowest. Clicking on the title of the book will take you directly to my Goodreads review. And yes, the content warning for Christmas deaths is still necessary because it ain't Christmas if someone doesn't die. I am doing this from memory so if I missed a ghost or death or funeral apologies in advance.
None.
Publication: September 26, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes, because even soft cozy hockey romance isn't safe. More specifically, in the past Landon's sister died and he thinks about it kind of a lot because what is Christmas if not the time to be emotionally haunted. Or actually haunted. (note: there aren't any ghosts in the book. probably.)
Summary: This book has the auspicious honor of being my best Christmas read of 2023. Thank you, Time to Shine, for being mostly harmless, just Christmassy enough, and not offensively tragic. As a fun bonus, our "interview" with author Rachel Reid about this book is on the blog! See here! (Disclaimer: yes I am friends with Rachel so this review may or may not be biased because I legally cannot be too mean about her books)
Publication: August 22, 2023
Christmas Deaths: If near deaths counted this book would be the deadliest Christmas book of all time.
Summary: Nothing says Merry Christmas quite like re-living the day you bombed a job interview and your beloved fiance got hit by a truck because you shook a magic snow globe and made a Christmas wish. I was very into reading this book to find out all the different ways aforementioned fiance could get run over by the delivery truck that had it out for his ass. It only got 3 stars because the fun Final Destination plot was ruined with Christmas magic bullshit and ridiculous Groundhog Day loop rules and adopting a child for Christmas and blah blah. So close to being the best Christmas read of 2023. :(
Publication: October 17, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes, a lot of people are dead and the book even features a makeout scene in a graveyard! So festive.
Summary: Yes, I, Erratic J Demon, did not hate a book written by Alexis J Hall. In fact I would call this book "aggressively fine" and "full of zany Christmas hijinks" and with characters who were "not completely filled with anxiety and self-loathing". It's all I've ever wanted from a 3 star Christmas read.
Publication: October 17, 2023
Christmas Deaths: EXTREMELY HIGH. We got a dead grandmother, a dead mother, a bunch of other dead people, and most importantly (and seriously) there is a lot of fertility issues and pregnancy loss in the book.
Summary: Christmas books are completely unaware of how absolutely batshit they can be. This book casually had a full sci-fi horror scenario where each time loop involved the main character living a day in someone else's body while the host's consciousness went...somewhere and her guide through all these loops was the ghost of her dead Grandmother whomst she found in the England version of a swamp. All of this was framed in an extremely unintersting plot involving a workaholic business woman finding her Christmas cheer through seeing Christmas through the eyes of poor people and her best friend and whatever. Snooze.
Publication: September 26, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes, the book opens with their dad dying and them reconnecting at his funeral. Fun!
Summary: This book was both not as whimsical as I was hoping and way more boring than I was expecting. It completely failed to use the magical shop with the immortal cat and their dead dad's silly scavenger hunt and instead became a very boring book about property law and having babies. It wasn't the worst thing I've ever read but it absolutely could have been improved.
Publication: September 26, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes but exactly who died and when I cannot remember because I read this too long ago and did not bother taking notes. Oops.
Summary: If this book was less about whats-her-face and her boring fiance being unable to figure out how to schedule spending Christmas with multiple people and more about the two queer members of the Christmas Orphans Club getting together it'd be a billion times better. But it's a Christmas book so of course it focuses on the most stupidest plots instead of the GAYS. Typical.
Publication: September 26, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes but I am pretty sure they're all in the past?
Summary: The only thing I remember from this book is the male main character going from "i cannot trust this big city bitch AT ALL" to "i wanna fuck her" in the space of five seconds. It was otherwise a very basic Hallmark movie plot of a big city career woman going to a small town to buy up a building with a poorly managed Christmas themed retail store and instead she learns to love Christmas through an asinine Christmas themed competition with ridiculous rules and absolutely no bearing on the plot and finally giving up her successful career to sell ornaments in the middle of the mountains with some aggressively mediocre man. Merry Christmas!
Publication: September 26, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes the plot is centered around the nephew of the female lead's neighbor dying and leaving her house to said nephew. But she dies before the book begins I guess. But I vaguely remember them having a townie funeral for her during the book??? Sorry everyone we have absolutely entered the chunk of forgettable Christmas books and my poor memory and lack of note taking means you don't get proper death warnings :(
Summary: In trying to jog my memory I went looking at Goodreads reviews and found this one that said "This was cute and silly but so forgettable that I forgot I didn't mark this as read on goodreads. It basically vacated my mind as soon as I was done." Which, yes, same. The cover doesn't even look familiar to me anymore, which really says it all. If one does not remember a Christmas book does it even exist? A question more interesting to explore than whatever the mediocre plot of this book was.
Publication: September 26, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes, but they were all in the past, so at least there are no on page funerals. (and on page funerals are very common in 2023)
Summary: Now THIS book I remember and not in a good way! It is set in the year 2000 because that was apparently the year all three of Christmas, Hannukah, and the end of Ramadan were at the same time but it otherwise did not need to be in 2000. In fact, it basically wasn't set in 2000 because it used the phrase "main character energy". And there was way too much airport security for a pre-9/11 world. The whole book was irritating up to and including the scene where these stranded airport passengers put on an entire Christmas pageant for the town. They were only there for like three days how and why are they putting on a Christmas pageant! Ugh.
Publication: October 3, 2023
Christmas Deaths: None! But the lack of deaths doesn't really help.
Summary: On the one hand, this book was actually a romance. On the other hand, I wish it wasn't. Both characters were annoying and flat and the set up of a blizzard forcing them to cohabitate sounded more uncomfortable and awkward than sexy and steamy like this book would have you believe. But perhaps that is on me for thinking sub-zero temperatures in a house with no power is NOT the perfect set-up for fucking one's neighbor. Maybe this whole time I have been the problem with these Christmas books...
Publication: October 10, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes, some run of the mill dead Grandmothers. But neither became ghosts so who cares.
Summary: It's about time the lesbians have a bad Christmas romance book. We've truly made it as a society. And this sure was a bad Christmas romance. The set up was some guy hiring Margot, one of the aforementioned lesbians, to be his Christmas date. But when they arrived at his family's ancestoral home turned hotel, there was a meet cute between Margot and the some guy's gay sister Ellie involving Margot hitting a pregnant dog with a car door and accidentally motorboating Ellie's tits. Insert some Christmas themed bonding scenes and way too much miscommunication and misunderstandings because these two have exactly one brain cell to share and they both fail to use it ever, mix it all together, and you get your Christmas romance! And the moral of this Christmas romance is to spay and neuter your pets and don't assume a girl your brother brings home is a gold digger because your family is NOT that rich and you're all grown ups in your 30s.
Publication: November 7, 2023
Christmas Deaths: None! But maybe someone's mom died a billion years ago? Idk it wasn't really mentioned.
Summary: This was sort of cute but mostly annoying. But hey, the young adult queers ALSO get their bad Christmas romance book rep! The main character Cam was super annoying and selfish and I just did not understand why he had to get some elf job at the mall or how $5,000 is enough money to continue his extremely expensive collegiate career out of state in New York City. Other baffling aspects included Cam's ex suddenly being weirdly evil, the romance between Cam and Marco, the elf competition, the conclusion of the elf competition, the musical theater references, and Cam's dad crying a lot. Nothing in this absurd book made any sense but perhaps if one were to read this book as if it takes place in a dystopian future or a parallel universe? Frankly, more of these books would benefit from some hard sci-fi tropes.
Publication: October 3, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Unknown. Possibly (hopefully) everyone dies.
Summary: The "quirky" female main character was baffled why she got attention by some hot actor one too many times and I could not go on. DNF @ 30%.
Publication: October 3, 2023
Christmas Deaths: Yes. One is more "death bed" than "actually dead" but they both involve knowing the secret family gelato recipe.
Summary: As I said on Goodreads, turns out I cannot care enough about a book based on LYING about a secret gelato recipe when it's not even an interesting gelato flavor. It's fucking vanilla gelato. DNF @ 35%.
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