Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

4.5 stars

This book was one of my most anticipated romances of the year, and it did NOT disappoint! The queer and demisexual representation was immaculate and so refreshing to see, and the book was a perfect mix of steamy scenes with drama to keep you reading. (Although sometimes I found the drama a touch overdone, hence the 4.5 star rating). The characters felt incredibly real and were so well-written, I understood their motivations perfectly and I LOVED Ellie. The Taylor Swift references were also so fun. Absolutely the coziest, perfect holiday rom-com to read this season! Highly recommend!

This book is absolutely adorably hilarious. I found myself laughing hysterically so many times my kids asked me if I was okay.

This book brings us into a complicated “love trapezoid” that involves strangers and siblings and friends and a crazy rich family, and just family drama in general - along with a side of MANY aspects of the LGBTQIA+ community. We have characters that use they/them pronouns and this book is the perfect proof that these pronouns can be used for a singular person without it getting confusing - because it was very clear who exactly they/them referred to from context.

These characters are all broken. Like - real-life, broken people. They feel so real. The issues they face are legit issues that anyone could be dealing with.

My chief complaint is the lack of actual webcomics….like, I don’t want the paragraph version with the webcomic title, I want the actual webcomic. I want to see the comic. While it was a cute way to do a flashback, I’d have preferred it to be done as an inserted comic over a comic headline with a throwback chapter. But maybe that’s just me.

Either way, highly recommend. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A huge thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!
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The Charm Offensive was my favorite book of 2021 and I have been anxiously awaiting Cochrun’s second novel. It was going to be difficult to top their debut, but I hedged my bets and went ahead and pre-ordered KHOFM anyway. A huge bonus of pre-ordering was a short story from Cochrun called A Charmed Christmas and it was just as cute as I could have ever hoped it would be as a follow-up to Dev and Charlie after the events of The Charm Offensive.
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Kiss Her Once For Me follows Ellie and Jack who share a magical snow day together and now a year later, they are thrown together again, but this time Ellie is fake-engaged to Jack’s brother. Having just finished a disappointing Halloween read, I decided to just skip straight on to Christmas, and this book had the holiday magic I was looking for. I don’t typically fall for love at first sight, but Cochrun made me believe that it could be possible to fall in love quickly and then grow into that love over time. The only thing I didn’t love was the reason for their original break-up and how much Ellie seemed to be blamed for circumstances that she merely was a victim to. There is demisexual representation here, but there was a real disconnect between the constant stating that Ellie can’t feel sexual attraction without a deep emotional bond, yet Jack is the magical woman to change that. All in all, it’s a cute Christmas read with the magical joy of a snow day where anything can happen and everything is possible.

Kiss Her Once for Me was a charming read! It was cute and filled with cheerfulness and joy with the holiday backdrop. The asexual/queer representation was very accurate. The love story was new and intriguing, and overall well-written.

Another absolute stunner of a book from Alison Cochrun!

I fell so in love with this end game couple and I loved the marriage of convenience spin.

Thank you so much to Atria and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review!

This story is making me so excited for the holidays. It was warm and cozy, but still pulled at my heartstrings in only the way Alison Cochrun's writing can. Ellie finds herself in a proposal of convenience with her boss's landlord, but she can't stop thinking about the one perfect day she had with a woman named Jack last Christmas Eve. Imagine her surprise when she shows up for Christmas with Andrew's family and learns Jack is his sister!

Cochrun writes such great characters, and the characters in this story are no exception. Each character is so well developed, and they are each complex, deep characters. Cochrun writes each character with such care, and the way she handles mental health, sexuality, and complex family problems is done with such care and kindness, that it was hard not to care deeply for these characters.

If you are a fan of The Charm Offensive, holiday/Christmas rom-coms, meet-cutes in a bookstore, Portland, Oregon, imperfect rhymes, and/or Taylor Swift, add this one to your holiday reading list. Heck, add it to your holiday gift guides for friends and family while you're at it!

Who doesn't love a fake dating Christmas romance starring a demisexual lesbian couple? There are just so many characters, and so many hijinks in this book. Ellie met the perfect person a year ago during winter, and has been thinking of her ever since. Money troubles lead her to agree to a fake engagement to Andrew, her landlord. When Ellie goes to Andrew's family Christmas, she runs into her crush from a year ago, who turns out to be Andrew's sister, Jack. As if that weren't enough, it turns out that Jacks' best friend has been secretly hooking up with Andrew. There's a cabin and a snowball fight. There are steamy scenes that Alison Cochrun is so good at writing. It really has it all. If you're looking for something with lots of drama, and a fast pace, this is the holiday book for you.

Thank you to @netgalley and @atriabooks for my e-arc of KISS HER ONCE FOR ME by @alisoncochrun ! This one published last week, November 1!

I loved this book! It was kind of a different take on a holiday romance, and for that, I loved it! It was very refreshing! If you read her first book, The Charm Offensive and loved it, then I think you will love this one!

My rating: 📚📚📚📚.5

One of my most favourite things I loved about this book? All the Taylor Swift refenrces! Every time there was one, I squealed with happiness and made my reading experience that much better 🥰

READ IF YOU LIKE:
💜 fake dating/engagement
💜 found family
💜 strangers to lovers
💜 bi/demisexual rep
💜 only one bed
💜 lots of Christmas activities
💜 the best grandmas
💜Taylor Swift references

While I generally liked all the characters in this book, the parents of the MMC were perhaps my least favourite. The grandmas were literally the best and SO FUNNY! The main characters both went through a lot, and even tho their love stories looked different, it’s not any less important ❤️

The only reason I didn’t give this a full 5 stars, was because of the miscommunication! So much of the drama that happened in this book would have been easily avoided if the people just communicated with each other!

Overall, I really did enjoy this book so much and highly recommend it!

Mkdnights song this book makes me think about: Snow on the Beach 💜

Be still my little gay heart. Absolutely phenomenal with so many great romance tropes. The MC isn't always that likeable but that seems to be by design. Chemistry between the leads was choice and the resolution was appropriate.

I ran into this book with many hopes and it nailed every one of them!

I loved the honesty and the reality that was a huge part of Cochrun's first book, and this book delivered it in spades as well. I found the relationships refreshing and honest, and most important very real feeling. Not always the spiciest, but the most heart warming.

"Kiss Her Once for Me" by Alison Cochrun was one of my most highly anticipated reads of the year, after devouring and loving Cochrun's earlier work "The Charm Offensive." Well, the novel lives up to the hype and is the perfect book with which to cozy up this winter (think Hallmark!)

The story revolves around Ellie, a struggling animator and coffee shop employee with a penchant for doubting and second-guessing herself, thinking the worst, and pining after lost love. Last Christmas she runs into a charming woman, Jack, at a Portland bookstore and has the perfect meet-cute. Life interferes and the two lose touch. Fast forward to the present and financially-strapped Ellie gets an offer she can't refuse from her boss to pose as his fake fiancee to secure an inheritance. As you can guess, Ellie's lost love from last Christmas suddenly re-enters her life and Ellie has to confront her fears and figure out what she wants in life.

Cochrun has a penchant for writing real, lived in characters. The characters are not afraid to confront and deal with mental health issues and anxieties, which is important to represent even more nowadays. It adds an extra layer of depth to them. I loved the queer and non-binary representation as well.

Not a full five stars because the "insta-love" between the Ellie and Jack initially did not feel fully fleshed out for me, but I really enjoyed their scenes in the present. The flashbacks were just not as strong as I wanted them to be.

But, overall, this was a really cheesy, light-hearted, fun rom-com and perfect for a holiday read.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I didn't think it was possible to love a book more than I loved The Charm Offensive, but Alison Cochrun has outdone herself! This was absolutely phenomenal and I couldn't put it down! It was cozy, but kept me on the edge of my seat. The characters felt fully developed and I loved them so much! This will be one of my top reads of 2022!!!

Last Christmas Ellie’s life had purpose and direction. Now, Ellie hates Christmas. She has to deal with her narcissistic emotionally abusive mother nagging her to pay back her own existence since she was 18, who she only wants approval from. She was fired from her dream job in animation and is now stuck at a hipster coffee shop and living in one of the smallest apartments possible in Portland. And she wants the perfect girl, but she already had that. Last Christmas Eve she met Jack, who spent she spent an amazing day with, an even more amazing kiss.... and other things, but then never saw her again.

The story goes back and forth between present and last Christmas. When it’s in the past Ellie uses her webcomics to tell the story of what happened between her and Jack last Christmas Eve. Back in the present Andrew and Ellie are fake engaged so he can get his trust from his grandpa. Showing up at his families lodge for Christmas Ellie sees Jack again for the first time in a year realizing that she is Jacks sister. Ensue the madness!

I love how the book discusses joy in your job and loving your work. Which we need to see more of in life and novels! The open dialogue about mental health, therapy, boundaries and healing yourself is so fantastic to see throughout it this book and one of the things I appreciated the most.

This book did lose me for a bit around 3/4 in. Other then a few chapters where I started to lose interest this was one of my top books of 2022. I found the main character extremely relatable. And I can't wait to see what Alison comes out with next.

A sweet, cozy-family, wintery, very gay, wildly silly "love trapezoid" (possibly a rhombus?) romp of a romantic comedy that made me feel a deep need to rewatch While You Were Sleeping. The emotional up and down swings were a little too much (I know every romance needs some miscommunication or something to drive our heroes apart, but this many cycles was a lot!) and honestly, I would have liked way more episodes about the rest of the very fun cast. Leave them wanting more, I guess?

This is an absolutely adorable (and steamy) sapphic holiday romance!! The main character has a lot of anxiety and parental issues so consider checking content warnings on The StoryGraph before reading. I really enjoyed the fake dating and marriage of convenience tropes and the “love trapezoid” of it all. These characters are messy just like people are in real life. Highly recommend!

Thanks so much to Atria for the copy via NetGalley! This book came out November 1 so you can read it now!

I am not sure if I can put into words how GOOD this book is. KISS HER ONCE FOR ME has been on my radar since I read Alison's debut novel THE CHARM OFFENSIVE and I knew it was going to be amazing going in but KHOFM exceeded ALL of my expectations. This book is tender, charming, somber, kind, steamy, profound, SWEET, etc. etc. etc. all while set with a Christmas story backdrop.

Also, the TAYLOR SWIFT REFERENCES ARE IMMACULATE.

Thank you SO MUCH to Atria Books and for the advanced copy. KHOFM is OUT NOW and is THE Christmas book of the season so trust me when I say you need it.

I was excited when I saw Alison Cochrun had a holiday romcom and I requested it ASAP. So happy I did because this was also really good!! Not overly Christmasy, but just the right amount of holiday vibes and a fun cabin setting in the PNW.

Ellie had met Jack the year before and she really fell for her. But after losing her the next day, and then losing her job, she's just trying to make it. She's working at a coffee shop now, and the landlord, Andrew, offers her money to pretend to be his fiance so he can get his inheritance from the family. She agrees. They spend a week at his family's cabin, and come to find out, Jack is there, and is Andrew's sister. They still feel the connection they had from last year.

Andrew's family was a hoot! I loved his grandma's…they're hilarious! Also, this book deals with some mental health issues. Ellie deals with some real anxiety and panic attacks. I definitely thought the author handled it really well. I felt bad for Ellie, that her family wasn't a very supportive family. I actually liked the discussions of mental health in this one. Makes it feel very real. I do feel that the ending was just a little rushed, and I wanted to feel more love, but I still can't even complain because I still loved reading this, and I def recommend it.

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own.

For most of this book I was having a good time. I really liked the family dynamics going on. I really liked the different Christmas activities going on. It was a Christmas romance without it feeling too Christmas-y (which was perfect for me considering it's only the beginning of November). I also really liked how the mental health stuff was dealt with in this book. The only thing I wasn't liking was how the fake engagement was handled. I just felt like the author kind of forgot about it as we didn't see Andrew and Ellie interact a whole lot. However, then the third act conflict happened and that just was a massive dealbreaker for me. The way Ellie and Jack reacted to the situation just made me not really like them anymore and definitely made me not root for them to get together anymore. It seemed to me like they were just better off apart, but that wasn't the message this book was conveying. So yeah, that didn't really work for me. I am really dissapointed in that though because I was really hoping I would like this because I adored "The Charm Offensive" by this same author and I was having a good time at the start but the ending just ruined things a little for me.

Kiss Her Once For Me took me on a rollercoaster of emotions. I wanted to yell at Oliver for her actions, roll my eyes at Andrew, sing Brittany Spears with Jack and hangout with the grandmas. While these characters were memorable and the plot was interesting, I had to switch my earc to an audio once this was published. Natalie Nadus's voice brought the story to life and shone a bright light on a book that was lacking some sort of spark that I needed thirty percent in.

Thank you Atria books and netgalley for my earc in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own!