Give Yourself Queer Friends-to-Lovers This Christmas

Sometimes you just need a little break from fighting, you know?

Some time around Halloween this year, I decided to read a bunch of queer Christmas romances so I could recommend some to you in time for the holidays. Things are so hard and dark and scary right now, so endlessly heartbreaking, and sometimes you just need a little break from fighting and feeling it all, you know? Or: at least I do. One of the most important books to me is Audrey Coulhurst's Of Fire and Stars — a queer fantasy romance with a lady knight! and a secret witch! — because it was literally the only thing that gave my brain a break from the misery I was feeling after the 2016 election. Love is my respite.

So I started on this LGBTQ holiday book binge and then got completely sidetracked, and you'll see exactly why below. If you're looking for a book to read while traveling in the coming weeks, or when you're taking a break from family time, or just when you need a mental breather to rebuild your strength to keep standing against oppression, here's some holiday(ish) books I wholly recommend. 

Also, let me just say for the three thousandth time in my life that if you think sincerity and happy endings and tender sentiment are beneath you, I think you have never made the transition from precocious child to actual adult, and your parents should have probably entertained at least one less original theatrical production from you in the living room. Which does put you squarely in league with Jo March, I admit, but there are very few actual Jo Marches in the world, very few romance-hating literary snobs acting from anything other than blazing insecurity.

Hem hem.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

Kiss Her Once For Me by Alison Cochrun

A butch lesbian who wears Carhartt and walks heavy and laughs really loud meets a jaded former-dreamer whose life and bank account are being sucked dry by an irresponsible mother. It’s like both of these characters sprang forth, fully formed, from the pages of my own diaries! A perfect snow day and super sexy one night stand on Christmas Eve serve as this book’s meet-cute, but the whole thing falls apart before it can really even get going — until Jack (Carhartt butch) and Ellie (former dreamer) re-meet the following Christmas because Ellie is FAKE DATING Jack’s brother. Kiss Her Once For Me is half-flashback, half-present day romance, all swooning.

Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur

A kind of rich asshole who doesn’t believe in magic or love (anymore!!!!!) meets a beautiful woman whose head is in the clouds. Like for real, way up there in the sky, because she’s an astrologer who’s working on a dating app for people who want to find their soul mate. Okay and how about this: The one who’s like, “I don’t believe in astrology!” and orders fifty-dollar glasses of wine is named Darcy. And the one who absolutely will not settle for a love that doesn’t deserve her, well, her name is Elle (Elizabeth). That’s kind of where the Pride and Prejudice of it all begins and ends, because our Darcy and Elle(izabeth) don’t spend four hundred pages misunderstanding each other in fits and starts through letters and inadvertent run-ins at rude aunt’s houses. No, Santa baby, they FAKE DATE AT CHRISTMAS.

Bonus: Count Your Lucky Stars

The third book in Alexandria Bellefleur’s Written in the Stars series is another sapphic romance and it features BFF Margot and EVEN MORE Darcy and Elle, including a double happy ending for them.

It's a Fabulous Life by Kelly Farmer

Kelly Farmer’s It's a Fabulous Life is, in fact, based on It’s a Wonderful Life, but there’s no one contemplating jumping off any bridges! Our lesbian Bailey George is simply considering reverse-Hallmarking it and getting the heck out of her small hometown forever. Even though her high school crush, Maria Hatcher, the first girl she ever kissed — under the mistletoe! — shows back up in Lanford Falls during Christmas season. And maybe Bailey George would have bounced to New York City forever, who knows, if a bus full of drag queens hadn’t rolled into town at the beginning of the book to change lives and earn their wings. This is the least spicy book on this list, but the most accessible to younger readers, I think. Especially maybe teens just figuring it all out in places where drag keeps getting outlawed. It’s very sweet!

When You Least Expect It by Haley Cass

Okay, here’s where things went off the rails for me in my holiday book binge. People have been telling me for years to read Haley Cass, and I kept meaning to, but bigger publishers also kept sending me all their books for free, and Haley Cass is her own indie publisher, so her work kept getting pushed down, down, down my list.

Well, and ha! Ha ha ha! Because once I started Haley Cass, I could not stop. And I mean it. I have now read all her books, and then read them again, and then read all the bonus content she wrote about each of her books, including published novellas and also the little slice-of-life snippets she provides to subscribers on her Patreon. (Because, yes, I also subscribed to her Patreon! I seriously cannot get enough Haley Cass!) Reading her books reminds me of the way I felt when I first found sapphic fan fiction, when I first figured out I’m gay, just endless pining and swooning and shoving my head into my own pillow to scream with queer glee and agony!

No one on this earth writes gay idiots who are in love — but don’t know they’re in love — like Haley Cass. In When You Least Expect It, we’ve got Hannah, an artist and aspiring architect who gave up her dreams when the man who got her pregnant in college pressured her to get married and leave school. And Caroline, a suit-wearing badass lesbian who is awesome with kids and terrible at dating and baking. Which is why Caroline super-duper hates the holidays: she’s always getting broken up with at Christmas! When You Least Expect It also features a kid character I absolutely love, which is no small feat in romance novels, and my favorite-ever almost-first-kiss. Plus, if you love seeing queer women own terrible cis men, you’re gonna fall as in love with Caroline as Hannah does. When You Least Expect It is a whole year long, beginning and ending on Christmas.

Bonus: Better Than Expected

When You Least Expect It is told from Caroline’s point of view, and Better Than Expected is from Hannah’s. It takes place partly during the original story, and partly the whole next year after. Ending, once again, on Christmas.

Those Who Wait by Haley Cass

I’m stretching the limits of credulity by calling this a holiday book, but several really important things take place in the winter season! And then! There’s so much bonus content about these characters that’s really, fully, wholly and truly just CHRISTMAS. All you gotta do is keep reading, which you will absolutely want to do because — siiiiiiiiigh — Charlotte and Sutton. Charlotte Thompson and Sutton Spencer. If I had a school notebook, I’d be drawing their names all over it with hearts everywhere.

Charlotte Thompson is the granddaughter of America’s first woman president, and she has dreams of following in those footsteps. Her political aspirations are, quite literally, the only thing that matter to her. She blows off steam sometimes by hooking up with pretty women she meets on the SapphicSpark app, but it’s never more than a single night. She doesn’t even want anything more than casual sex. Until she meets Sutton Spencer, an MFA candidate in her last year of graduate school for literature at NYU. Sutton absolutely does NOT do one night stands, which is a struggle for her because she’s just realized she’s super queer and she doesn’t have any real experience with women. She and Charlotte meet on accident on SapphicSpark and then on accident in real life. Everything that happens next will have you clutching at your heart and falling over onto your fainting couch and squealing and heavy-breathing and growling (both because of sexual tension and absolute consternation!!!!!). Charlotte Thompson is who Bette Porter wishes she could be.

Bonus: Forever and a Day

This is just one of the many pieces of bonus content you get as a gift for falling in love with Charlotte and Sutton. There’s also more one-shots on Haley Cass’ Partreon and an AU she’s writing about her own characters! This is the best thing about Haley Cass! She loves her characters even more than her readers do — which is saying something — so she keeps them living in our imaginations with more of her words! She’s like her own AO3 for her own bbs!

On the Same Page by Haley Cass

Again, is this a Christmas book? I mean, no? And yet! The catalyst for the whole entire story is a Christmas gift gone very, very wrong. (But also, it turns out, very, very right.)

Gianna and Riley have been basically inseparable since they roomed together their freshman year of college. Gianna grew to be a big time influencer with her own line of lingerie even. Riley works in TV news. They are best-best-best friends. They know each other inside and out. They still do their laundry together every single week — which works out especially great for Gianna, who’s been stealing Riley’s favorite sweatshirt basically their entire friendship. But yeah, the Christmas gift Gianna accidentally gives Riley flips their entire relationship on its head and has Riley questioning everything, including her own previously-straight sexuality.

Riley has a twin sister who’s story is told in a different book, Down to a Science, which was published first, but I would actually recommend reading On the Same Page first because there’s a reveal about 80% of the way through that made me nearly bite through my own hand. And then a second reveal about ten pages later that made me literally burst into happy tears and throw my kindle (gently) to the end of the bed because I needed a second.

I think we might be getting a New Year’s Eve party with all the characters in the Haley Cass Literary Universe, but I’m not exactly sure. I’m hoping so. If not, probably I’ll just turn around and kick off 2024 by reading all these books a third time.