I literally don’t have words to describe how much I loved this.
2 women go on a perfect date on Christmas Eve, but there’s a misunderstanding and they both think the other one ghosted them.
Fast forward a year, and one of the women agrees to be her boss’s fake fiancé so he can get his inheritance. They go home for Christmas and who is his sister??? The other half of the perfect date.

I can’t get over how much I adored both women. My thoughts on the song “Holly Jolly Christmas” have made a complete 180, too. “Kiss Her Once For Me” is a beautiful line and I love how it was woven throughout the entire novel

“The only promise you ever had in life was the one moment you were living. And I was. Happy for now.”

I read two Emily Henry novels back to back and for the life of me I can never remember which one I liked. (I liked this one)
Two writers swap genres and are stupidly cute

It was gay, but not great. Of the trilogy, I assumed I’d enjoy the 1st (WITS) and 3rd (this one) best because they were both queer love stories. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a queer love story. It just has a lottttttt less substance than the other two books.

No.

What a DELIGHT this was

This sure was a book that I read for some reason

Wow. Wowowow. I definitely wasn’t expecting any part of this story. It was one I had borrowed because it was included in the lgbtq+ genre at the library, but I’d put off starting it because I had wrongly assumed it was going to be fetishy or extra heteronormative. I literally couldn’t have been more wrong and I’m SO happy I got to experience it.
I listened to the entire 15 hour audiobook in one day, and steadily cried through the last 4 hours of it, which is impressive since my meds make it hard for me to cry.

I don’t want to get too spoiler-y, but the kid comes out as non-binary halfway through, and it was handled so beautifully. I loved that we didn’t see any trauma around it and that the book flawlessly switched pronouns without any fuss. I loved hearing the narrator switch so perfectly as well (I know that’s their job but whatever)

Anyway. The summary is that a (kind of disgraced) duchess moves into this castle that her great*6 grandparents bought AGES ago and everyone in the town is resentful towards the family because of the damage that was done when they got the castle. The gardener is this sweet sweet man who was in and out of foster homes growing up, and now he is fostering this preteen.
Super healthy displays of masculinity and queerness and identities. Lots of sweet family moments and tender parenting.

God and the EPILOGUE and Aaron’s card???????? I SOBBED.

Hm.

Wait, you’re telling me that his name is spelled “Eamon”? Audiobooks, amirite.
Anyway. What a strange time this was.

Trevor is precious. A lot of the book was cringey but I did smile stupidly through a lot of it. I still can’t get over the fact that she is a medical professional and vlogged about trying to date her ex boyfriends— USING THEIR FULL NAMES, PHOTOS, AND DETAILS?!?!?

The doctor ex was kinda right tbh. Like, he was a gaslighting asshole, but he wasn’t wrong about the vlogging thing.
There were so many TS references too, which like, that’s fine and you do you. But Jesus Christ why was it CONSTANT