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 backlist pick that I hadn’t read until recently. I rarely get excited by holiday romances because usually by “holiday” they just mean “Christmas,” and while Christmas romances can be fun, they aren’t something I seek out on my own. Today’s recommendation, though, involves many holidays and each holiday’s royal family. It’s a queer M/M, fake competition, forbidden romance that had me laughing hysterically. While Christmas is featured, so is my favorite holiday: Halloween!
The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch
Nicholas “Coal” Claus messed up big-time. Since his mom left him and his brother Kris with their father, the current “Santa,” Christmas has never really been the same. Coal absolutely hates what his father has turned it into, a capitalist hellscape full of meaningless plastic. When he was home over the summer, Coal decided to take things into his own hands and spread a little Christmas joy. This ended up being an utter disaster and a PR nightmare that has been haunting him and his family for months.
The book opens with Coal being very, very drunk after making the aforementioned terrible decision. He is in college and out with his brother and their friend, Iris, who is part of the Easter royal family. Coal breaks away to be alone and clear his head, and ends up confessing his misdeeds to a very attractive stranger in an alley behind the bar. They kiss and the stranger disappears.
When Kris and Coal go home for winter break, their father has a surprise: a forced marriage between Coal and Iris. Coal and Iris are best friends and not dating at all; however, their fathers struck a political deal and since Coal’s spectacular fuck-up, he really has no say in what happens and certainly can’t stand up to his father. No one knows that it’s all a political move, and the tabloids are absolutely swooning at the idea of a royal wedding. The leaders of Halloween catch wind and object, so the reigning Santa “agrees” that they can send along their prince to compete for Iris’s hand.
When Hex, the Prince of Halloween, arrives very unhappily at the North Pole, Coal’s brain short-circuits because what on earth is the mysterious hot guy he kissed in an alley doing at his home?
This book is absolutely hilarious, incredibly sexy, and the lovable two leads are a bit of a hot mess. It is the perfect read for the season.
If you like this book, don’t miss this rival wizard romantasy by the same author. And if you like a winter romance, both holiday-themed and otherwise, here’s a list of wintry romances to check out.
English (US) · 