Ellie’s carefully crafted life plans went down the toilet after last Christmas, when she spent a day falling in love only to it meant nothing to the other woman. Soon, she was fired from her dream job, and now struggles to stay afloat as another Christmas looms ahead. She has no idea what possessed drunk-her to agree to a mad plan of a fake engagement, and things get much, much worse when she discovers that her fake-fiancé is the brother of the woman from last Christmas.

Y’all. You know how I was just saying that I have an entire pile of books sitting on my shelf and I needed to do a little December readathon to get through them? I am soooooo tempted to just end my reading year with this little gem of a queer romantic comedy. It was so perfect: Portland, every flavor of the alphabet-mafia-rainbow, Christmas, hilarious one-liners, sexual tension, tugged heart strings, such relatable parent-based trauma and fear of failure…it was really just so perfect. It would be the best way to end the reading year, even if I know that at least one book I planned to read after this will be one I also love. Still. Maybe that book can just wait, and my 2023 TBR pile can just be 10-15 books longer than it usually is, and I can have my quiet December playing this lovely story in my head rather than moving on to the next thing.

Seriously. I’m not usually one for Christmas books, or cheesy rom-coms, but this book wins. I’ll leave y’all with some of my favorite lines:

Jack nods curtly. “Yes. It seems like we’ve had some kind of miscommunication about what happened last year. Miscommunications are for the straights,” she says with self-righteous indignation. “We are going to talk this out.”

“You know what’s actually harsh? The fact that you never watch the TikToks I send you–”

I’m about 90 percent sure a drunk napkin contract is not a legally binding document, but that remaining 10 percent is wreaking havoc on my anxiety.

[The dog] flops down in the snow and rolls back and forth, making the dog equivalent of a snow angel. “So that’s Paul Hollywood.”
“He’s less dignified than he seems on Bake Off.”
“They say you should never meet your heroes.”

The thing is, I used to dream about someone who would always choose me above everything else. There was romance in that dream, sure. I wanted someone who would see all my flaws and still lean in and tell me I’m beautiful. … I wanted someone who would see the whole mess of me…and wouldn’t get freaked out or turned off. Someone who would kiss me anyway.
So yes. It was a romantic delusion. But beneath the desire to be cherished was the ever-present thrum of my desire to be chosen. I wanted someone who would pick me to be their family.