It’s that time of year again, folks.
The regular bells are jingling, the sleigh bells are ring ting tingling, it’s Christmastime in the city, and I’m celebrating by scouring my library’s digital ebook platform for the best self-published holiday-themed erotic novellas your tax dollars can buy. (That was a joke. Vote for your mileages. Please, I’m begging you.)
The rules are the same as last year: I’ll be rating these books on a four-star scale for how exciting/chaotic their plots are, how likely they are to make George Takei say “oh my,” and, of course, how much holiday nonsense they to get up to when they’re not, um, getting up to other stuff. This year we’ll add a bit of a flavor by awarding a special superlative (or whatever the opposite of a superlative is) to each featured book.
‘Tis the giving season, after all.
Christmas Wishes by Rhian Cahill
Plot: ★★☆☆
Steaminess: ★★★☆
Festive cheer: ★★☆☆
Best line: “Plunging his tongue between her parted lips he lapped at her teeth, tangled with her tongue, and plundered every warm, wet recess he could reach.”
Superlative: Worst Vocabulary
Synopsis: Tallitha Jarman’s photography business is in a pickle—she’s scheduled to record the Christmas pageant at the local daycare, but all her assistants are on holiday break! Fortunately, she can always count on her long-time friend Dean Hall to step up and lend a hand; unfortunately, a mixup at the costume shop means that Dean’s elf get-up isn’t kid-friendly… and stirs up feelings Talli thought she’d buried forever. Can these friends-to-lovers make it work or are their Christmas wishes destined to remain unfulfilled?
Verdict: The first problem with Christmas Wishes concerns suspension of disbelief. Namely, I find it very hard to believe that, having known this man for at least a couple of decades, the thing that finally pushes Talli to break her “no sex with friends” rule is seeing him in an ill-fitting Party City elf costume. And fine, to each her own, I suppose, but the next problem is Dean’s very inappropriate physical reaction to Tallitha’s well-fitting Party City elf costume. (It’s a preschool, Dean! You’ll get arrested!)
The real action happens in the back half, wherein Talli and Dean do finally get jingly with it and the reader is provided with a handy list of phrases that should never be used to describe human anatomy or interaction, including “lush globes,” “pointy tips,” and “covered mound.” (Grim stuff, truly.) Dean asks Talli to marry him and she says yes but—in a stunning break from genre conventions—only after a year has passed, when it is revealed that their true Christmas wishes… were for each other.
Aww.
Vintage Toys for Lucky Boys: A Gay Transgender Holiday Romance by G. R. Richards
Plot: ★☆☆☆
Steaminess: ★★☆☆
Festive cheer: ★☆☆☆
Best line: “If you ever want me to organ-ize you, just say the word.”
Superlative: Worst Metaphor(s)
Synopsis: All Randy wants this Christmas is to buy his mother something nice. But things get a little more complicated when he takes some old toys to an antique shop and meets its owner Max, who is both incredibly jacked and legally unable to buy Randy’s stuff without seeing some ID. But Randy’s ID still has his very feminine-sounding birth name on it, and he’s not sure he’s ready to be that vulnerable with an antiques dealer he just met and is also incredibly attracted to… even if his gift-giving plans depend on it!
Verdict: I had originally picked out a different story by this author to read which, while having in it a line of such transcendent badness that it made me rock back in my chair and say, out loud, “oh NO,” was ultimately too uneventful to make the cut. Vintage Toys, meanwhile, is somewhat unique in subject and construction. By which I mean that the characters hard stop in the middle of the rising action (as it were) to have a sincere-if-clumsily-rendered conversation about Randy’s specific psychological hangups associated with sex and transitioning.
I say this is notable, but self-publishing in general and ebooks specifically have long been an avenue for authors from and stories about marginalized groups who were unable to tell their stories through the traditional and traditionally discriminatory publishing industry. (The effect of the scene is somewhat damped by Max being the one to (literally) mansplain Randy’s feelings about being to trans to him, but 2015 was a different time, I guess.)
Most notable, though, is this author’s distinct failure to grasp what makes an appropriate simile, leading to such truly maladroit lines as “Randy was bound as tight as the foot of a Chinese empress” (yikes) and one where he compares Max’s well-muscled forearms to penises, a metaphor so atrocious and clearly wrong that I will be thinking about it for the rest of my natural life.
While You Were Gone: A Holiday Romance by Michelle Love
Plot: ★★★☆
Steaminess: ★★★☆
Festive cheer: ★☆☆☆
Best line: “Maia wasn’t a feminist for nothing, though, and when her assailant paused, she sprang into action, sliding around on the icy ground and taking out his knees.”
Superlative: Most Off-Screen Action
Synopsis: When Maia Ghanna’s high-society husband Zachary Konta goes missing with their daughter on Christmas Day (or possibly a couple days before; the timeline isn’t all that clear), all he leaves behind is a note that reads, “I’m sorry.” Devastated and alone, Maia moves from New York to an island off the coast of Seattle, where she falls for Atom Harcourt, a mysterious playboy (kinda) architect with dark eyes and a darker past. But as the five-year anniversary of the disappearance approaches, a series of sinister incidents convince Maia that her past might be as dead and buried as she’d previously assumed.
Verdict: Michelle Love is at it again, though this time with a slightly more restrained plot than last year’s The Naughty One. More restrained naming conventions, too (the most obvious exception being Atom and yes, it does make the book better if you spend all of it picturing him as Astro Boy).
Fans of Ms. Love’s previous works will also enjoy a return to such signature elements as a psychopathic stalker no one manages to recognize despite having spent several years in his close proximity, maternal-based trauma for the male lead (now this knives!), and a distinct lack of holidays for a book billing itself as “a holiday romance.” Fun new surprises to this volume (or to this reader, at least) include the worst pet name for any child, several cameos from the Michelle Love extended universe (which really skews this world’s billionaire-to-stalker-victim ratio), and multiple scenes that make one go, “I can’t imagine that’s how sex clubs actually function.”
Ignoring all that, though, I would like to take a moment to directly address Atom. Sir, while I understand it is not likely that you will ever again be in a position where you are holding your pregnant wife after she’s just been stabbed in the abdomen and you’ve just shot and killed her supposedly dead ex-husband, but the next time that you are and she tells you that she’s about to pass out, the correct response to that is not “you do what you need to do, my love.” It is to apply pressure to the wound. Thank you for your time and have a very merry Christmas, Mr. Harcourt.

I’m thrilled to see this premise return. Thank you for reading these so I don’t have to.