Kiss Her Once for Me: A Novel

Product Information

I get what the title is doing but I’m sorry I don’t want to interpretive dance to Holly Jolly Christmas. Last Christmas was referenced so many times by name!! I bet they changed the name in editorial bc there’s no way this wasn’t called last Christmas or it’s been a year or someone special.

I would love to talk more about this book, but my review is getting long already. While the year is not up, this book might be in the running for my biggest surprise of the year. While I was hoping to enjoy this, I didn’t not expect this to be a 2022 fav. It is also that this book doesn’t seem to work for me on paper since it has some of my biggest pet peeves, but Cochrun sure pulled it off anyway. As I mentioned before, this is only her second book so it makes me really excited to think about what other books she might write in the future. If there was any question about it, I absolutely recommend this queer holiday romance. Not to be a grinch but like… Respectfully: I just didn’t care about their family traditions: cookie making, snowball fights, decorating, family photos, Christmas songs…… god I was bored 😪 (no offense) Basically every “cute” (more like awkward) moment they had together was forced by the family (or the bad weather lol). None of it felt organic, which made it hard to enjoy. Kiss Her Once for Me is a gift of a story. Capturing the festive charm and nostalgia of the season, the fresh-fallen-snow wonder of falling head over heels, this holiday romance also reminds us that giving and receiving love can be as tangled as a knot of Christmas lights, yet with patience and perseverance, finally unwound, no less beautiful, the glowing joy we all deserve.A struggling artist strikes up a marriage of convenience with her one-night stand’s brother in this holiday romance. The image creeps in. The girl with fire in her eyes and snow in her hair. Dancing on a bridge at midnight. The sound of her laugh in my ear and her breath on my throat and her hands—

Her claims of providing for my basic needs are greatly exaggerated. When I was twelve, I’d asked my mother for money for new art supplies. Linds hadn’t taken it well. And it’s not just the content of Kiss Her Once for Me that is festive. Cochrun’s writing, on top of being very funny, is often thematically and seasonally on point. Take, for example, this description of Ellie’s anxiety: “My insides are a runny glass of eggnog.” When Andrew arrives in the coffee shop for the visit that sets the plot in motion, Ellie tells us: “A visit from Andrew Kim-Prescott is usually a highlight in my sad-hermit life, but this is just the flammable tinsel on the dried-out Charlie Brown Christmas tree of my day.” Christmasy metaphors abound! Two days ago, the neon-yellow flyer appeared in the slit of my front door, informing me of the raise in rent January first. Fourteen hundred dollars a month for four hundred square feet of subterranean hellscape in Southeast Portland.Believe me, Alison, this story is a gem (I’ve already said that twice, didn’t I?), and I will gulp down every book you write from now on at a furious pace! My only qualm, HOW WAS THE DOG NOT NAMED PAWL HOLLYWOOD (someone also voted for Pawl Howllywood and truly so many missed opportunities) SUCH DEVASTATION HAS NEVER BEEN WITNESSED. A sparkling winter wonderland, quirky family traditions, and a messy 'love trapezoid' make the yuletide gay in this earnest queer rom-com... it's delightful to watch this clever spin on the fake dating trope unfold. This is a winner. - Publishers Weekly

I don’t know if I’d strongly recommend this book since it had so many flaws, but I don’t regret reading this book. It will find an audience that loves it. I’m just not part of that audience. So I have pretty conflicting feelings about this. On the one hand I thought it was well written, fun to read, and never bored me as other romance books have in the past, but there were also a lot of parts that really got on my nerves. Verdict? I have no clue! my intense commitment issues makes me afraid to shelve books on my gr faves shelf but yknow what? shelves on gr faves shelf

And this is it. This is my moment. I need to strike while she’s briefly filled with maternal pride and affection. One thing to love about romances is there’s no spoiling the end, at least not in a general sense. We know these two queer women end up making it work and get their happily-ever-after, because otherwise it wouldn’t qualify for the genre. The joy in reading an awesome romance like this one is the journey along the way and the specific ways that the book explores familiar themes and tropes. In that way, Kiss Her Once for Me is a truly stellar example of not just a holiday romance or a queer romance, but of any kind of romance because it’s so good at playing with genre expectations and at building fully realized leads who have character arcs separate but complementary to the love story. Plus, have I mentioned it is really fun and really gay?