Patricia Elzie-Tuttle is a writer, podcaster, librarian, and information fanatic who appreciates potatoes in every single one of their beautiful iterations. Patricia earned a B.A. in Creative Writing and Musical Theatre from the University of Southern California and an MLIS from San Jose State University. Her weekly newsletter, Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice offers self-improvement and mental health advice, essays, and resources that pull from her experience as a queer, Black, & Filipina person existing in the world. She is also doing the same on the Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Podcast. More of her written work can also be found in Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy edited by Kelly Jensen, and, if you’re feeling spicy, in Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 4 edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. Patricia has been a Book Riot contributor since 2016 and is currently co-host of the All the Books! podcast and one of the weekly writers of the Read This Book newsletter. She lives in Oakland, CA on unceded Ohlone land with her wife and a positively alarming amount of books. Find her on her Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkTree.
Today’s book recommendation is a new sapphic holiday romance by the author of Delilah Green Doesn’t Care. There are so many juicy tropes packed into this book: lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, a secret relationship, and a couple more that I won’t mention, just to keep things fun. This book has a large, eccentric cast of mostly queer characters, and by the end of it, I wanted to be friends with each and every one of them.
Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake
Charlotte Donovan hates the month of December and it seems that December hates her right back. If it’s December (and it is), anything that can go wrong will go wrong for Charlotte no matter how careful she tries to be. The worst was probably five years ago, when her fiancé left her standing at the altar.
Career-wise, things are amazing. Charlotte is co-founder of the renowned Rosalind Quartet, which will soon be going on tour in Europe. She just needs to make it through Christmas. She has plans to do nothing (as usual) but Sloane, the co-founder of the quartet, insists that everyone leave New York City and go home with her to her small hometown in Colorado that absolutely oozes Christmas cheer. Charlotte begrudgingly agrees, if only to fit in more rehearsal time.
Brighton Fairbrook works at Ampersand, a bar in Nashville that features live music. Brighton used to dream of being a musician, but after a falling out with a band she had co-founded and which is now hugely popular, Brighton has stopped making music altogether. She is looking forward to going back to Michigan for Christmas with her parents, but it looks like they won’t be home for the holiday. Brighton’s boss, and friend, Adele, insists that Brighton go home with her for Christmas. Her mom runs a bakery back in their small hometown in Colorado. The most notable holiday event in this town is called Two Turtledoves, a series of holi-dates for the singles in the town (including out-of-towners that are there for Christmas).
Going to Colorado is the last thing that Brighton wants to do but it’s better than nothing, or at least that is what she thinks until she steps out of the car and sees Charlotte, the woman she left at the altar five years prior.
This book is fun, sometimes adorably awkward, explicitly sexy, and an absolute treat to read this holiday season.
English (US) · 