We have been blessed this year with so many queer holiday romances that I just had to make a quiz to help you decide which one to read. All of the featured books were published in the last two years! And three of them feature Jewish main characters!! Whether you want a really Christmasy rom com full of references to Wham’s “Last Christmas” like Kiss Her Once for Me or to mostly ignore Christmas with two Jewish teens eating Chinese food while snowed in together on Christmas Eve in How to Excavate a Heart, this quiz has a queer holiday romance novel for you.
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Known in some internet circles as Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian, Casey Stepaniuk is a writer, librarian, and new parent. She writes for Book Riot and Autostraddle about queer and/or bookish stuff. Ask her about cats, bisexuality, libraries, queer books, drinking tea, and her baby. Her website is Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian. Find her on Twitter, Litsy, StorygraphGoodreads
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What are you eating for dinner on Christmas Eve? Hmm… Maybe Chinese food, maybe sufganiyot, maybe latkes. Definitely not MATZAH!
I took the quiz twice, but both times I got Christmas romances that corresponded to the location I picked. I’d love to know the titles of the romances with Jewish protagonists!
Quiz Result: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow
This YA novel features a delightful sapphic enemies to lovers romance plot as well as a Jewish twist on the usual Christmas rom com formula. Shani and May meet under pretty, uh, unusual circumstances: Shani’s mom hits May with her car with Shani riding as a passenger. It’s a bad start to Shani’s winter break which was already shaping up to be miserable given she was recently dumped. She is supposed to be focusing her month in DC on her paleoichthyology internship, not her depressing love life. But her love life takes over again in a new way when she serendipitously re-meets May through a dog-walking gig. (May’s dad’s corgi is the dog in question). Suddenly the two college freshmen are tentatively getting to know each other. Then these two Jewish girls get snowed in together on Christmas Eve, and unceremoniously “celebrate” by eating Chinese takeout. But when Shani’s hurt over her ex-girlfriend reemerges, she wonders if this winter fling is really meant to last.
Yes, How To Excavate a Heart is one of them. Also, Season of Love by Helena Greer and The Holiday Trap by Roan Parrish. Season of Love has the most Jewish content!
Alternatively, we can eschew the big-5 publishers and read the myriad indy and small-house sapphic holiday books out this month, including a lovely and tropetacular 9-book set called “Tis The Season Collection” organized by the brilliant, talented, and trans author Lily Seabrooke.
Ooh thanks for sharing that Lily Seabrooke has a holiday collection! I featured one of her books in my recent list of trans romances. Her stuff looks so good.
Amor Actually is self published and Picture Perfect Christmas is published by indie queer publisher Bold Stroke Books. Roan Parrish used to self publish and now publishes with Sourcebooks, which is also an indie (midsize) publisher. So not all of these are published by the big 4.
I do think queer authors publishing with big publishers deserve our support too! For readers who can’t afford to buy books, mainstream publishers doing sapphic romances is so important because then they will have access to them at the library, which often doesn’t have the resources to collect self published / small press books unless they’re local.
Season of Love! I love a holiday romance so I’ve already read Kiss Her Once For Me (highly rec) and the Holiday Switch and How to Excavate a Heart are both on my holds list
The Holiday Trap ! This sounds great ! I love stories where the characters intertwine, and the settings, an island off of Maine and New Orleans, are totally dreamy.
Kiss Her Once For Me by Alison Cochrun
A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
The Holiday Trap by Roan Parrish
Season of Love by Helena Greer
White Out: A Novel
Amor Actually: An Anthology
Picture-Perfect Christmas by Charlotte Greene
How To Excavate A Heart by Jake Maia Arlow
Oh, Autostraddle, can you please give us the gift of being able to read all the answers to your quizzes? I know the writers do do much work to write about each one. An the books sound amazing and totally worth my time. Please share your work with us all, not just the ones we haven’t to
Season of Love! This is the first I’m hearing of it and it sounds SO good
It’s so good!! I didn’t finish it before it had to go back to the library but I can’t wait to get it back to finish. It’s a great read.
Oooh! I think I might really like this book! A Season of Love seems super relatable to me. Except for inheriting stuff.
Also Season of Love! Great answer.
I got Amor Actually. I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this one before, it sounds so good!
What are you eating for dinner on Christmas Eve? Hmm… Maybe Chinese food, maybe sufganiyot, maybe latkes. Definitely not MATZAH!
I took the quiz twice, but both times I got Christmas romances that corresponded to the location I picked. I’d love to know the titles of the romances with Jewish protagonists!
I got:
Quiz Result: How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow
This YA novel features a delightful sapphic enemies to lovers romance plot as well as a Jewish twist on the usual Christmas rom com formula. Shani and May meet under pretty, uh, unusual circumstances: Shani’s mom hits May with her car with Shani riding as a passenger. It’s a bad start to Shani’s winter break which was already shaping up to be miserable given she was recently dumped. She is supposed to be focusing her month in DC on her paleoichthyology internship, not her depressing love life. But her love life takes over again in a new way when she serendipitously re-meets May through a dog-walking gig. (May’s dad’s corgi is the dog in question). Suddenly the two college freshmen are tentatively getting to know each other. Then these two Jewish girls get snowed in together on Christmas Eve, and unceremoniously “celebrate” by eating Chinese takeout. But when Shani’s hurt over her ex-girlfriend reemerges, she wonders if this winter fling is really meant to last.
Yes, How To Excavate a Heart is one of them. Also, Season of Love by Helena Greer and The Holiday Trap by Roan Parrish. Season of Love has the most Jewish content!
Season of Love also has a Jewish protagonist and so does The Holiday Trap.
Alternatively, we can eschew the big-5 publishers and read the myriad indy and small-house sapphic holiday books out this month, including a lovely and tropetacular 9-book set called “Tis The Season Collection” organized by the brilliant, talented, and trans author Lily Seabrooke.
Ooh thanks for sharing that Lily Seabrooke has a holiday collection! I featured one of her books in my recent list of trans romances. Her stuff looks so good.
Amor Actually is self published and Picture Perfect Christmas is published by indie queer publisher Bold Stroke Books. Roan Parrish used to self publish and now publishes with Sourcebooks, which is also an indie (midsize) publisher. So not all of these are published by the big 4.
I do think queer authors publishing with big publishers deserve our support too! For readers who can’t afford to buy books, mainstream publishers doing sapphic romances is so important because then they will have access to them at the library, which often doesn’t have the resources to collect self published / small press books unless they’re local.
Season of Love! I love a holiday romance so I’ve already read Kiss Her Once For Me (highly rec) and the Holiday Switch and How to Excavate a Heart are both on my holds list
Isn’t KHOFM so good!! I’m reading it right now.
I got Whiteout, one of the few that I hadn’t heard of, and I’m intrigued!
The Holiday Trap ! This sounds great ! I love stories where the characters intertwine, and the settings, an island off of Maine and New Orleans, are totally dreamy.
Is there a list of all the books in this quiz? I want the bi Demisexual one and I don’t seem to be able to answer the right questions to get it
Oooh, I want that one too!
Kiss Her Once for Me!
From the ALT text, the books are:
Kiss Her Once For Me by Alison Cochrun
A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
The Holiday Trap by Roan Parrish
Season of Love by Helena Greer
White Out: A Novel
Amor Actually: An Anthology
Picture-Perfect Christmas by Charlotte Greene
How To Excavate A Heart by Jake Maia Arlow
Just started season of love bc of this, even though it wasn’t my quiz answer!
Ooh and I also want to know about the bi deni sexual!
That one’s Kiss Her Once For Me and it’s very cute.
Oh, Autostraddle, can you please give us the gift of being able to read all the answers to your quizzes? I know the writers do do much work to write about each one. An the books sound amazing and totally worth my time. Please share your work with us all, not just the ones we haven’t to
* happen to answer depending on our cheeky mood
I got The Holiday Trap and immediately put it on hold at the library. The Holiday is my guilty pleasure seasonal movie so this was v on point.