Ellie has a perfect afternoon with a stranger on Christmas Eve in the snow (yes the perfect stranger/ love of my life trope). The next day her life goes back to normal and she’s not sure just what went wrong. She pines for what she lost and turns the story into a webcomic. One year later, she finds herself on a forced date with a man who needs a wife to get his inheritance (yes that old trope). She drunkenly agrees when he offers her some money. When she meets his family, she realizes her perfect stranger from last year is her new fiancée’s sister. Uh oh…
This was the perfect holiday read. It’s in a Holidaze meets Eight Perfect Hours with four messy queer twenty somethings balancing their feelings with the world’s expectations of them. I generally shy away from books with a girl whose life is a mess and love saves the day but Ellie’s generalized anxiety disorder and struggle to understand her own hangups was very relatable. I liked that Andrew (the fiancée) and Jack (her perfect stranger love) were from an equally messy place but had some semblance of self and helped Ellie while moving forward themselves.
Beware if you’re not a steam person, this one is pretty open door. That is generally not my thing but I totally recognize and celebrate that queer romance is finally able to have these scenes in mainstream books and I applaud that.
I read this one in an afternoon. What’s the last book you read in one sitting?
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