@alisoncochrun is quickly becoming a fave for me!

Ellie Oliver is experiencing a major low point in her life. She has a “one night stand” that leaves her heartbroken, loses her job, and is desperate for money and feels very lost.
She makes a deal with Andrew, the coffee shop’s landlord that she is currently working at, to marry him so that he can receive his trust fund. In return, she’ll receive part of the money.
She hesitantly accepts, and finds herself spending Christmas with his family, only to realize his sister is her one night stand from the past.
This book is full of moments of laughter, characters that are easy to root for, and a great plot. It’s also set during Christmas time, which is my absolute favorite!

Another ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me!

SUCH a cute hallmark movie romance, but with a sapphic twist! Super cute romance for anyone who can't get enough of cheesy Christmas romance novels and movies for the holiday season. The perfect book to release in November

OMG! This book was absolutely adorable and I loved everything about it. The characters, all of them, were so swoon-worthy and just had such amazing vibes. I loved the dynamic between Ellie and Jack. I could truly feel how much they craved each other through my phone screen. It was overall amazing and this is definitely a book I would recommend to anyone who loves a good queer reconciliation romance!

Y’all. This book. Was so good! Oh my god, I loved every moment of it, it was spectacular in every way, I am internally screaming and have been ever since I put it down. Ellie was amazing and so goddamn relatable and Jack, oh my god I loved her so much. And the side characters! Honestly, the love trapezoid was so funny it had me cackling out loud, my friends hate me for all my rambling to them about this book. This is definitely a new favorite, I thought I couldn’t like it more than The Charm Offensive but I loved every second of it, I picked it up and could not put it down, I finished it in two days and it was only because I forced myself to stop reading due to need of sleep. Overall I loved this and would highly recommend it!

This book follows a bisexual, messy, struggling artist and her butch baker love interest. At Christmas time. With family tradition antics. And come twisty-turns of hilarious miscommunication. A classic, cheesy Hallmark-Christmas-movie, if you will. I couldn't be more in love.

I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas books, because they are either phenomenal or just plain blegh. No in-between. However, this book was SOLID. A mixture of fun, a little bit of depth, and overall warm-and-fuzzy feelings really paid off in the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for sending me an eARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Kiss Her Once For Me, by Alison Cochrun

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0 stars

I need you to stop what you're doing and pre-order/add this book to your TBR immediately! Kiss Her Once for Me comes out on November 1, 2022, and it's the perfect read for the holidays.

This book has such a fun premise: Imagine the perfect snow day — the city shuts down, there's magic in the air, it's Christmas Eve, and you meet and spend the day with your absolute dream person. After spending a wonderful night together, you leave (because you're deeply afraid of failure) and assume you'll never see them again. One year later, you end up fake-engaged to the landlord of the coffee shop you work at because it will benefit you both — he'll get his inheritance, and you'll get $200,000. When you go to his family's home for Christmas, you meet his sister... who is none other than your dream person you spent last Christmas with. She doesn't know your engagement is fake, and your fiancé doesn't know you had a one night stand with his sister.

This book was so festive and queer and fun! It filled my heart all the way up and broke it at the same time. (All of the emotions were worth it, though.) The absolute chaos of what Ellie calls the "love trapezoid" is hilarious and inevitable. I adored each of the characters and their personalities. I even loved how the major conflict was handled — it felt authentic and there was genuine growth from everyone. I don't usually find myself loving the "found family" trope, but it worked so well here and I was rooting for Ellie, Jack, Andrew, Dylan, and their whole family. I also think the cabin scene is the most romantic love scene I've read in a long time. It was descriptive and tender, but not crass. I felt how much Ellie and Jack loved each other through every action. These two characters are clearly better together and I'm glad for the journey they took to figure that out. I only wish there was an epilogue to give us a glimpse of how they're faring together in the future.

And while this book is fun, it balances the joy of the holidays with heavier topics. (Make sure to check the content warnings before reading!) There's family trauma — like childhood emotional neglect, perfectionist parenting, and representation of the insecure attachment style. There's also legit anxiety representation, which Alison Cochrun writes so well and makes me feel so seen, and fantastic queer representation throughout.

I'm happy to give this book five stars, but even happier to recommend this to people. I will be shouting from the rooftops about how much I love this book! The Taylor Swift references and built-in holiday playlist were the cherry on top. Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Kiss Her Once for Me follows Ellie who one year ago met Jack and they fell in love over the course of a day. But after that magical day  Ellie finds herself betrayed and alone. Flashforward to this year Ellie is broke and is looking for a better job. One day Andrew comes into the coffee shop where Ellie works and where he is the landlord. Andrew and Ellie end up going out and drunkenly decide to get married so Andrew can get his inheritance. Because Andrew has to get married in order to get his inheritance. Andrew and Ellie go to Andrew's family's house for Christmas. But when they get there Ellie is surprised to find Jack Andrew's sister. And soon Ellie must choose between her fake relationship or to pursue her lost love.  

I was very nervous to read this one because I hated The Charm Offensive ( it just wasn't for me ). But I wanted to give Alison Cochrun another shot because, I don't like to judge an author based on one book. I am so happy I decided to give this book a read. It was such a cute read. This was such a different take on the fake dating story. I also really liked the cute Christmas vibes of this one as well. It had just enough Christmas vibes to not take away from the overall plot. I also loved how there was just the right amount of drama in this one. If you are ( or are not ) a fan of the Charm Offensive you will like this one. Or if you just want a cute Christmas romance read you will like this one. Thank you Alison Cochrum, NetGalley, and Atria Books for this ARC.

I loved the Charm Offensive because it was a sweet vulnerable story. Then I read this! This is the queer rom-com I’ve always wanted. I cried, I laughed out loud, and my heart is so happy for this. I can’t wait to purchase it. Jack and Ellie are two wonderful love interests who have so much heart. The family, MeeMaw in particular, we’re just incredible. You’ll fall in love with the whole crew. I wish I could give this more than five stars. It made me long for Christmas in July.

Holy cow this was amazing! An imperfectly perfect Christmastime Rom Com. Ellie is so relatable with her Generalized Anxiety and also the constant fear of failing. I was wondering if Alison was directly writing certain things from my brain? I LOVED the While you were sleeping vibes without it being a complete copycat of the movie because this is its own story. I also LOVED the TSwift and some of my other fav romcom references. Overall this will be a HIT on bookstagram this holiday/winter season. And it’s not overly Christmasy. Alison is turning into one of my fav authors after Charm Offensive. Auto Buy. Can’t wait for the next one! 👯‍♀️

This was such an adorable story with very likeable characters that I ended up finishing in one sitting. Ellie and Jack had wonderful chemistry and their relationship made me giddy from the very beginning. I also really enjoyed Andrew's character and his friendship with Ellie as well as his own little romance.

The complaints I have about this book are the plethora of pop culture reference that I found quite forced at times and the writing that felt repetitive in its expressions and descriptions. However, neither of these took away from the story or my enjoyment of it.

Highly recommend this one and very excited to re-read it during Holiday season!

I read The Charm Offensive and loved it, and Cochrun's second novel did not disappoint.

It's cozy, it's trope-y, it's extremely queer. Not just gay. Queer.

It made me crave a peppermint hot chocolate as I read it in two sittings on the 4th of July.

It made me laugh, it made me sigh. It gave me.... Emotions??

We have a super likeable cast (with a few exceptions, and none of those characters get a ton of time on-page). Trans, NB, GNC characters. Neurodivergent MC. Boozy Grandmas. A hot, tattooed lesbian baker. A dog whose name made me laugh out loud.

I also enjoyed that the MCs didn't have, like, super fit bodies. Soft tummies and stretch marks and things, you know, like actual humans have. This doesn't mean they aren't sexy, or stop them from being extremely thirsty for each other. You love to see it.

There is a Third Act Bad Moment (TM), which I can always do without, but it is a staple of the genre and YMMV. It's not terribly drawn out, and does lead to some good character development.

I'd also say this one qualifies as instalove, but I'm very demi and love a slow burn so, again, YMMV.

I may be biased, as a demi bisexual disaster with severe anxiety, reading this book about a demi bisexual disaster with severe anxiety finding love with a butch baker who has a cute dog, but this is a highly enjoyable read.

Elements that I did not enjoy were personal preferences rather than any misstep or poor writing on the part of the author (content notes under spoiler on Goodreads)

I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was absolutely charming, and I loved reading this cozy Christmas story in the middle of summer.

The characters were so vivid and likable and flawed and all felt like real people, even side characters like Dylan, Katherine, and the grandmas (the grandmas especially were so much fun!). The discussion of mental health was also very well done, from Ellie's anxiety to Jack's ADHD. As someone who also has ADHD that has in some ways alienated me from my high-achieving family, this portrayal was so great to read.

The pacing was also great, and I really liked having the adorable flashback sections to Ellie and Jack's snow day adventure breaking up the sometimes fraught present-day plot.

The one thing I think could have made this book even better would be to see some of Ellie's webcomic art. While I'm sure it wasn't included for good reason and adding artwork to a book is more expensive and likely comes with logistical challenges with the layout, etc., I kept hoping to see some! Maybe in a special edition or as a preorder reward for one of Alison Cochrun's future books?

This review is also posted to Goodreads and Storygraph, and I will post a review to TikTok in late October, close to the scheduled release date. This book was provided by Atria Books via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Alison Cochrun has done it again with Kiss Her Once for Me! I adore this novel and its characters. In her author's note, Cochrun shared that this sapphic holiday romp was inspired by 90s era romcoms, specifically Sandra Bullock films. It truly delivered on this promise.

I highly recommend reading this book with a playlist that contains 50% pop music from the 00s and 50% Christmas music to best capture the overall vibe of this book.

The thing I truly adore about Cochrun's writing is how naturally she weaves in complex mental health issues into characters in her romances. Elle Oliver is not only dealing with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but she is also facing a collapse of her well-crafted life plan, more than a feeling of failure she enters this story feeling like she has lost her identity and purpose. Once again, Cochrun held a mirror up to me and forced me to see a part of my own personality through the lens of a fictional character and I thank her for it.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

Kiss Her Once For Me is the first book by Alison Cochrun I'd read and the second I finished, I went searching for another. This book is delightful; I absolutely adored Ellie and was desperate for an epilogue once the story was over. I hope this becomes a series or there is a follow-up as there's so much of Jack and Ellie's relationship to explore, with the foundation laid for us to see what happens with Laika and the Butch Oven.

I think the book could be slightly longer - I want to have a scene with the father as opposed to talking about him. I'm glad Katherine left him, and I wanted slightly more elaboration on how Jack asked Katherine for help.

Dylan and Andrew are very sweet - it was clear immediately that they were going to be a couple.

This one was utter perfection - volleying from this Christmas to last Christmas and unraveling the story of Ellie and Jack. They had one incredible day together and then the ghosting to end all ghostings. Will fate intervene and bring them back together?

Three cheers for the incredible diversity and representation as well as the realistic portrayal of insecure attachment. Found family is the best - blood isn’t always better

Christmas 2021 found Ellie Oliver dissolving in tears in the middle of Powell's bookstore. The perfect stranger found her, and they spent sixteen hours together before going their separate ways. Christmas 2022, Ellie has lost her dream job - and every other job that’s lead her to her current position as a barista - her landlord is raising her rent, and her mother’s idea of a good relationship is asking Ellie for the money back that it cost to raise her. She couldn’t be more down on her luck, until millionaire Andrew Kim-Prescott walks into her life and quite literally upends it by asking her to enter a marriage of convenience. He needs to marry to inherit a $2M trust fund, and in exchange, he’ll give her 10% and a divorce after a year. A drunken agreement is hashed out on a napkin. But Ellie can’t stop thinking about that girl from Christmas a year ago…

Another angst-filled knockout queer romcom from Alison Cochrun. Ellie - like many of us - has a fear of failure, but her generalized anxiety disorder makes that fear crippling. A lot of this book is about Ellie coming to terms with that. It’s also about navigating boundaries with family and also oneself. It’s about the friends we absolutely never deserve in life, but somehow they find us anyway. And most of all, this is about finding a way forward when you don’t know how to take the next step.

I loved all of the characters, from Ellie to Andrew to Jack to Dylan to the wild octogenarian grandmothers. I loved how villainous Andrew’s father and grandfather and Ellie’s mother are. In fact on our StoryGraph buddy read, I left a few all-caps comments to my wonderful buddy read partner @what_jess_read to that effect. Kiss Her Once for Me has quippy one-liners, well-rounded queer characters, and self-awareness of the romance genre that works incredibly well with the story.

I LOVED THIS BOOK.

Ellie wrote a webcomic about a Christmas Eve where she met and fell in love with a woman all in the same day, only to be heartbroken Christmas morning. The next year after that is a pretty difficult one for her, getting fired from her job, living in a rundown apartment, and having her mom constantly calling her to "borrow" money (and ONLY for that purpose). She agrees to a marriage of convenience with Andrew Kim-Prescott, the son of a very rich family, so that he can receive the settlement his grandfather gives him in his will. Of course, when she goes to visit her new fiancé's family, she learns that his sister just so happens to be that woman she fell in love with so long ago.

I'm always a little hesitant about flashbacks, and there are a LOT of them in this one, which made me nervous. However, these are set up as stories that Ellie wrote and published online with webcomics, and I think that makes those flashbacks feel a bit more meaningful. The flashbacks are given to us out of order, aligning with what is going on in the story, and I think it flows well!

I also loved what Cochrun does with addressing the mental health of her main characters. She does this pretty masterfully. Ellie deals with anxiety that displays as a constant fear of failure which tends to lead to total inaction and giving up on things before she has the chance to fail. As someone who has dealt with the same issues in the past, I think this was super well-written and I could easily relate to Ellie's issues, even if they applied in different situations.

But my favorite thing about this book is the relationships between Ellie and all of the other characters in the book, whether those relationships were positive or negative. There were challenging dynamics with parents and other incredible relationships with friends (along with a bit of a "found family" situation)! Those relationships are what really makes this book. With everything else going around them, this book is very much driven by Ellie and the people around her and I loved how things seemed to tie up with everybody. I cannot wait to bug all my friends to read this book!

Alison Cochrun has managed to wrap up the feeling of While You We’re Sleeping without the creepy coma aspect of the story. I’m deeply obsessed with how cute this book is. I loved the chaotic but loving family, the range of queer characters, the incredible romantic tension that counteracted the ethical conundrum of a fake engagement, and the representation of anxiety.

This was so wonderfully crafted and filled me with so much feeling. I wish I could read this again for the first time.

This book was so beautiful and a perfect holiday season read. All of the characters had so many layers to them which made getting attached to them inevitable. I loved that although the “marriage of convenience” trope used, I’ve never seen interactions between the betrothed like this!
The lgbtq+ acceptance in this story will have you truly KNOWING that love it love and it’s wonderful.
Some parts got a bit repetitive in parts which is why I docked it a star but otherwise I loved these characters.

Thank you to Netgalley for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Kiss Her Once for Me is the Holiday Queer Rom-Com of my dreams! In this novel we follow Ellie who recently moved to Portland to go after her dream job of working at an animation studio. Christmas rolls around, and Ellie is all alone after her Mother decides to not come visit. She goes to Powells bookstore where her and Jack (a sexy Asian lesbian) have an adorable meet-cute which turns into a one-night-stand with intense feelings and complications.

A year later, Ellie has lost her dream job, and she’s now working at a coffee shop to get her through the days. Over drinks, the shops landlord, Andrew, ends up proposing a drunkenly shocking plan to Ellie: A marriage proposal so he is able to get access to his 2 Million Dollar inheritance, and he will give Ellie 10% to alleviate her of her financial woes.

Ellie decides to go through with the plan, and part of the deal is spending Christmas with Andrew’s family. Once they arrive to his family’s cabin, Ellie realizes that Jack, the woman she fell for during a one-night-stand last Christmas, is Andrew’s sister. Ellie is torn between keeping up appearances or risking it all to get the girl of her dreams.

This was such a cozy read, the perfect Holiday rom-com that I know everyone is going to be devouring this winter. Alison Cochrun has a stunning way of writing, and each character is lovable and relatable in their own unique ways. I especially loved Jack and Andrew’s grandmother, what a peach! Additionally, the amount of queer representation in both sexuality and gender identity was just so real and beautiful. Alison Cochrun as quickly become on of my favorite authors, and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!