Kiss Her Once for Me is a wonderfully well-written holiday rom-com. We meet Ellie Olivier who works as a barista after losing her dream job and is barely making ends meet. She has no significant other but can't stop thinking of her one night stand from last Christmas. When Andrew who owns the coffee shop she works at proposes a fake marriage that can benefit them mutually, Ellie agrees to accompany him to meet his family during the holidays. Showing up at his family's cabin together, Ellie discovers that Andrew's sister is Jack the woman she met a year ago.

I really swooned hard at the chemistry between the two leads. Ellie's colorful personality really shined through whenever she interacted with Jack. Who wouldn't want a sexy strong baker to keep them company? I related to Ellie's insecurities while falling for Jack's loud and steady presence. The flashbacks of their initial meet-cute are interspersed throughout the book and capture the one magical day of how they met and fell in love. Usually love at first sight stories aren't quite believable, but Alison Cochrun made this premise work for me. The author mentions her love for While You Were Sleeping and this book is inspired (in a good way) by that film.

I highly recommend this book to those who love queer love stories! 5/5

Ellie and Jack shared a perfect, single day together a year ago and things have been going downhill for Ellie ever since. She’s begrudgingly agreed to marry her landlord, Andrew, in the ultimate fake dating scheme to secure Andrew his inheritance and so she can get her share of the money. Ellie and Andrew are spending the holidays with his family in order to sell the scheme and so Ellie can meet her soon to be in laws. All is going well until Andrew’s sister walks in- and Ellie is shocked to see Jack again.

I already had high expectations for this one after loving The Charm Offensive and I was not disappointed! This was such a cute and enjoyable read. I also really appreciated the hugely diverse cast of characters with varying sexual and gender identities and some mental health representation as well. Despite being a festive book, the plot felt more holiday adjacent so I had no issues reading this in the summer time. I would highly recommend this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for the advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest review.

*Thank you to NetGallery for a free earc review copy for a honest review. All opinions my own.*

Kiss Her Once for Me is as great as The Charm Offensive is. You cannot compare the two exactly as the story and the characters are different, but the writing is amazing for both those stories, and Cochrun is now an autobuy author. I love her books.

Elle and Jack meet at a Powell's on Christmas Eve, and fall in love. Christmas day, Elle is running out of Jack's place crying. And so begins the story.

A year when Elle met Jack, she thought it would be a start of something new, but a year now, shes been fired from her dream job, has a horrible apartment, and works at a local coffee shop where she doesn't get treated well. (It's customer service, of course she doesn't.)

That weekend the coffee shop building landlord offers her a deal she can't refuse. Fake marry him, and in a year's time, she will get 200k.

This is THE Christmas book of the year. I cannot wait to preorder this one, and have the physical copy. I will be rereading it again near Christmas.

They go to his family's cabin (which is literally a mansion) and she meets the girl she fell in love with last Christmas, and the shenanigans start.

The family that Elle meets are amazing. I especially love the grandmas.

I will say there are some content warnings which are: biphobia, homophobia, mental abuse from parents, cheating, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. There is an acknowledgement of these warnings by the author before you jump into the book.

Reading two holiday romances back-to-back, I'm loving holidays in July .

There is great LGBTQIA+ rep. I would definitely check the triggers for this one.
Overall, I like Ellie and I like the fake-dating trope. However, I've never like the insta-love trope so it wasn't the greatest book for me. It took me a few weeks to make it through this ARC.

I do think others would enjoy this one more than I did!
2/5

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Ellie is not having a good year. She was fired from the job she moved cross-country for, her new boss is a dickweed, her crummy apartment is going to evict her, and she lost the perfect woman last Christmas. This Christmas in Portland sucks. Until a rich customer at the coffee shop she works at offers an arrangement - get married so he can get his inheritance and she'll get 10% of it! All she has to do is spend Christmas with his family.

Oh, you knew without even reading the blurb that the woman from last Christmas would show up. The relationship between Ellie and Jack wavers between animosity, curiosity, and attraction masterfully, leading us to cheer for them to find their way back to each other. The supporting characters were rich and interesting, making this a successful second novel for Alison Cochrun!

I thought this was a really heart-warming story of two women who are paralyzed by failure and I think the struggled that both Ellie and Jack go through in this book are so relatable for people of any age, but especially for recent college grads who feel pressured to have everything figured out. I loved the addition of Jack encouraging Ellie to talk through their miscommunications early on in the book because I feel like too often, the reader knows that two characters have feelings for each other and they spend the entire book not telling each other for fear of their feelings not being reciprocated. For me, the way that Jack encourages openness and honesty (even when it's difficult) was a breath of fresh air.

The Charm Offensive has been on my TBR list for a while now and now I know I HAVE to read it asap!

Thank you NetGalley for providing this eArc in exchange for an honest review!
This book is about a woman who makes a fake engagement deal with her job’s landlord but ends up falling for his sister.

This book does contain biphobia, homophobia, and toxic relationships with parents and I’m glad that there were content warnings addressed in the book before the book began.
I absolutely loved reading this novel! This book is I do think that some points of the book were a little bit slow, however, overall, it was a really enjoyable queer romance.
One of the aspects of the book that I really enjoyed was the writing. This is my first Alison Cochron book and I think her writing is very addictive and easy to get into.
I also really enjoyed the characters of the book. They were very well written and pretty well developed. The only thing that I didn’t particularly love about the our main character was that her character development seemed a little too forced and fast, in my personal opinion. I would have also liked to see a little more screentime for some of our side characters because I thought that they were really interesting.
There was so much representation in the book! There was nonbinary, bisexual, lesbian, queer, Asian, and anxiety rep just to name some off the top of my head.
I would highly recommend picking this book up!
I will finish with one of my favorite lines from the book: “You are a sexy oak tree.”

I really enjoyed this book. I love a nice Christmas rom com book but I felt this was more than that. I love watching Ellie’s journey of growth throughout the book. I’m a sucker for a fake dating trope and this took it even further with a fake marriage and money involved! I fell in love with the Kim-Prescotts family and really enjoyed all of their dynamics. I loved all the different representation in this book and I love that so many different people could relate to characters in the book. Overall I really enjoyed this book and would highly recommend for a nice Christmas read!

This book was so fun!! It's a queer retelling of the romcom While You Were Sleeping, and it really has that same classic feeling. It has a bunch of entertaining romance tropes, and it also touches on more serious topics like mental health and family conflicts.
If you like holiday romances, Taylor Swift, and slightly unrealistic plots that are still really fun to read about, you'll love this. The characters were easy to root for and the pace was quick and engaging.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

An absolutely adorable holiday rom-com story! The anxiety rep was so amazing to read, and I loved seeing Ellie's growth. She absolutely deserved the ending she got.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read and review this ARC!

DNF at 15%

I really did not enjoy the start of this book. I truly did not like the heroine's narration/voice, and felt like the anxiety representation was honing in on harmful stereotypes rather than giving nuance to her character. I also wasn't into the humor.

Rather than continue through and give a very harsh review, i'm DNFing and hoping someone else enjoys this more than I did.


I received an ARC copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

Alison Cochrun's sophomore novel, KISS HER ONCE FOR ME, is the queer holiday romance of my dreams! Cochrun's premise seems cutesy and innocent enough—fake engagement, chance encounters on Christmas Eve, the overbearing and loving BFF—but in true Cochrun style, nothing is as simple as it appears.

This novel dives deep into the fear of failure, what it means to be honest with yourself and with others, and how to reconcile your own past trauma so you can fully love someone else. One of the things I love most about this book is Ellie's growth and self-discovery. Yes, this is a Christmas Rom-Com, and yes this book had me singing ALL the 90s pop and Christmas classics. Out Loud. In July. And yes, this will forever be a December re-read for me. But more than that—Cochrun gets to the heart of what it truly means to be honest with yourself and with others.

Cochrun's writing is witty, her banter is the BEST, and I love the way she handles flashbacks. I cannot say enough good things about this book. Please add it to your TBR as soon as possible. I wish I could give it six stars!

Ah well, this was too adorable for words! This book is perfect for a little Christmas in July. If you are in the mood for a queer, fluffy, holiday romance then this book is for you!

Ellie falls in love in just one night. She has a meet-cute with a woman named, Jack, at a book store on Christmas Eve. But things don't go as planned the next day. Ellie is heart broken, and soon jobless. She is broke and working ar a coffee shop. The shops landlord, Andrew devises a plan to help both of them. A fake marriage so he can access his inheritance. Sounds like a great plan, right? Well, things take a turn for the weird when they visit Andrew's family. His sister is, Jack, the woman from last Christmas Eve! Does Ellie follow her heart or stay safe?

What I enjoyed:
- LGBTQI+ representation of course! We need more fluffy holiday rom-coms with queer representation. This one was perfect!
- Ellie, I really related to her! I could understand her woes. I thought she was a very likeable character.
- The laughs I had while reading this. I caught myself giggling multiple times

This book was just SO sweet, and cute. I loved everything about it. I can't wait to re-read this during the holiday season. Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! 4 stars out of 5.

This book was super cute especially for around the holidays! It was a little predictable but definitely a sweet story.

Sorry, but I requested this on NetGalley so I could see what the ebook looked like. I wrote the book, so I do think it’s good, but my rating might be biased

Thank you netgalley for the opportunity. I thought this book was okay. I wasn’t so invested in it. It had some lacking just to keep my attention.

This was my first read from Alison and it lived up to my expectations after reading the description. It was super cute and I also loooved the side characters as well. 10/10 will be purchasing for my physical collection and recommending!

If you're a millennial, you'll probably know the lyrics, "I knew I loved you before I met you," and that's exactly how I feel about this book! When I read the description, I was immediately hooked. And then I read it and confirmed my suspicion that Alison Cochrun is an auto-buy author for me. Her casts of characters always slap, and I was major heart eyes over the main romance. The fake dating plot was so well written, and I loved how Cochrun wove multiple will-they-won't-they plots into the story, not just the main couple. The parental drama hit so close to home, and it kept me rooting for Ellie as she broke away from a toxic family situation. I don't reread books very often, but I'm already waiting for the day when I can sit down and read this one again.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

⇢ Sapphic romance
⇢ Christmas Feels
⇢ Found family
⇢ Meddling old grannies (there are two!)
⇢ Fake dating/fake marriage of convenience
⇢ Only one bed

I just finished this book a minute ago. Literally. And I am having a hard time getting my thoughts down because it was SO GOOD. When I read The Charm Offensive, I enjoyed it. The audio, especially, was very well done and the story just flowed in such a natural way. But Cochrun has blown TCO right out of the water with Kiss Her Once for Me. An author's second book is rarely better than the first but this one is such a standout.

Ellie and I are practically the same person. I connected with her on so many levels and the emotions she was feeling really came through with Cochrun's writing. This book isn't sad and it has such a cute HEA, but damn. Did it make me tear right up! I also couldn't help but salivate over Jack. I almost wish this book was dual POV because I would have loved to get some chapters from her perspective. But maybe AC will gift us some bonus material one day. And maybe an epilogue? I was missing that here and that is maybe my only nitpicky comment.

I am preordering my copy of Kiss Her Once for Me tonight and I also have Celine Dion on repeat. When you get the chance to read this book, do it and thank me later.

It’s blistering hot outside and this christimas book cured me of everything. I’m in love with Cochrun’s writing style and I can’t wait for everything else they come out with. This book is like a mushy hallmark movie and I can’t recommend it enough!