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Quiz: What Queer Holiday Romance Should You Read?

A swirly background in blues, oranges, and golds. The words HOLIDAYS 2022 are on torn gold paper, along with the Autostraddle logo.

Holigays 2022 // Header by Viv Le

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.

Choose a holiday romance novel setting:(Required)
Which queer couple pairing(s) appeals?(Required)
Which holiday sweet treat are you craving?(Required)
Which opening line speaks to you?(Required)
Which hat is keeping your head warm this winter?(Required)
Which wintery activity do you love?(Required)
Choose a romance trope:(Required)
What are you eating for dinner on Christmas Eve?(Required)
What's your favorite kind of pie?(Required)
Choose a romantic Christmas movie:(Required)
Judge a book by its cover:(Required)
What's your favorite classic Christmas song?(Required)
What would you like to be doing at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve?(Required)
What outfit are you wearing to your work holiday party?(Required)
Choose a menorah:(Required)

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Casey

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, Storygraph Goodreads and Instagram.

Casey has written 128 articles for us.

24 Comments

  5. 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!

    Reply to This Comment

    • 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.

      Reply to This Comment

  6. 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.

    Reply to This Comment

    • 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.

      Reply to This Comment

  11. 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

    Reply to This Comment

  13. 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

    Reply to This Comment

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