Every December, a certain kind of movie takes over the streaming services. A woman with a big-city career problem, a small town or snowy cabin, a fake relationship, a family that’s a little too nosy, and a kiss under the mistletoe right before the credits roll. For decades the couples in those movies were straight. Alison Cochrun’s Kiss Her Once for Me takes the whole formula and gives it to the queer kids.
Here’s the setup. Ellie Oliver moved to Portland for her dream job in animation. Then she lost it. A year earlier, on Christmas Eve, she met a woman in a bookstore and fell hard, but a betrayal the next morning and the job loss that followed left her broke, lonely and working in a coffee shop.
Enter Andrew, the coffee shop’s landlord. After a few drinks, he makes Ellie an offer. If she marries him, he can claim an inheritance and she can fix her money troubles. To sell the story, they’ll spend the holidays at his family’s cabin. Then Andrew introduces his new fiancée to his sister, and the sister is Jack, the woman from the bookstore.
If you’re a romance reader, you just smiled. Fake engagement, a forced-proximity cabin, second-chance romance and Christmas all in one book. That’s a lot of beloved tropes stacked together, and Cochrun clearly knows exactly what she’s doing with every one of them.
Cochrun made her name with The Charm Offensive, a queer romance set behind the scenes of a dating show. Kiss Her Once for Me, published in 2022, was her second novel and her first sapphic romance. The book gives Ellie a real problem to solve, beyond who to kiss. She has to choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of a real one, and that question works at Christmas and in March just the same.
The holiday rom-com is having a queer moment. For a long time, if you wanted a cozy Christmas romance between two women, you were limited to a handful of small-press titles and some very low-budget films. Now there are mainstream novels like this one, with big publishers behind them and covers you can read on the bus. That’s worth celebrating.
This is for readers who watch every holiday romance movie and wish more of them were gay. It’s also for fans of tropes done well, and for anyone who wants a warm, funny book to read by the fire, or by the radiator in a Toronto apartment, which is close enough.
Now for the important questions. What’s your favourite romance trope, and which one do you secretly can’t stand? Have you ever been to a holiday gathering that felt like a rom-com, for better or worse? And what queer holiday book or movie would you recommend to everyone this year?
Publication details are on the Kiss Her Once for Me entry in the Lesbian Bibliography.