
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, New Adult, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bi MC, M/M
PoV: First-person, present-tense
Published on: 8th October 2024
ISBN: 1250333202
Goodreads

Red, White & Royal Blue meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in a sexy, quirky rom-com where the golden-hearted Prince of Christmas falls for the totally off-limits Prince of Halloween.Nicholas “Coal” Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.
But the heir to Christmas is soon to do his duty: he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.
Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand…and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar hottie: Hex, the Prince of Halloween.
It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other over a marriage of convenience that no one wants. And it all leads to one of the sweetest, sexiest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights
~amazing group chat names
~don’t trust Santa
~PEEP
~what happens when a Hex curses
~this book sparks SO MUCH joy!
It has been a WHILE since reading a book made me this freaking happy!
The Nightmare Before Kissmass is what I’m delighted to call a squee-book: one that makes you grin, makes you sparkle, that fills you up with fizzy, vivid delight. The kind of book you want to hug to your chest and kiss in the rain and gift to absolutely everyone. I have not read anything of Raasch’s before, but I will be preordering the next book in the Royals and Romance series and COUNTING THE DAYS until it gets here!
This book, though. This book is silly, and knows it, and owns it. I approve immensely.
what’s a Halloween drink? Apple cider? Goat blood?
In a world that is almost ours, the holidays are magical kingdoms ruled by magic-wielding royals. The normal world does not realise that there is a real kingdom of Christmas, or Halloween, or Easter. That’s a secret. But the Holidays wield real power, which is partly why it matters so much that out main character Coal – aka, Prince Nicholas of Christmas – is a well-intentioned fuck-up. His one attempt at Being A Prince backfired massively and got so many people hurt, so he’s primed to do whatever his dad – the reigning Santa – tells him to, for fear of making another terrible mistake.
Except Santa announces that Coal and his best friend Iris – princess of Easter – are to be married. Without consulting either Coal or Iris about it. Inter-Holiday politicking drags the crown prince of Halloween, Hex, into the mess, and events spiral from there.
I have just two sort-of-critiques, and I say ‘sort of’ because neither of them actually bothered me; the romance is kind of insta-love-y, and the worldbuilding is bonkers and nonsensical. I have no problem with insta-love – it’s only lust masquerading as insta-love that annoys me – and as for the worldbuilding?
Yes, it’s ridiculous. It makes no real sense. I could poke endless holes in it.
And folx, I did not care.
If you’ve followed my reviews a while, you might get how big a deal that is: I am unhealthily obsessed with worldbuilding. The tiniest detail can jolt me completely out of a book if it doesn’t fit into the worldbuilding; and worldbuilding that doesn’t make sense to me is often a quick DNF. I’ve put aside books after TWO PAGES because of worldbuilding that immediately doesn’t work for me!
But I was having so much fun with Kissmass that I couldn’t care less. Raasch made me laugh so much that I was able to embrace this adorable, cheeky, absolutely ridiculous premise. I was full of so much fizzy delightedness that I forgot to nitpick. I fell so hard for these characters that it didn’t bother me that their powers were nonsensical.
I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT.
So no, Raasch does not address the fact that these holidays are all religious ones, nor how Christmas’ influence going global is tied to and has echoes of Christian colonialism. Nor is there any explanation for how exactly these kingdoms came to be or if they came before or after humans started celebrating these holidays. (Did the kingdom of Christmas use to be called Yule and changed as the celebration did? Or did they come into existence only when Christmas in its Christian form was invented? Who knows! Who cares? Not me, for once!)
It’s just not that kind of book, folx. If you’re taking it seriously, you’re doing it wrong. You’re not meant to think about the set-up very hard. It’s utterly escapist, sugar-plum-fairy-sweet nonsense, and it’s excellent.
Now I’ve told you a bit about what the book ISN’T, let’s get on to what it IS.
Back to the Point!
I realise that it’s wildly overused as a comp, but Nightmare Before Kissmass really did give me fantasy!Red, White and Royal Blue vibes throughout. I can make a good argument for the similarities between the two stories, but what really matters is that they have the same FEEL to them; the same sort of wish-fulfilment, the same kind of giggly heart-eyes, the same undercurrent of hope and optimism and joy.
In both books, that’s in big part down to the characters, and I have to say, I LOVED the cast here. Coal is Just Trying His Best – he has such a huge heart, but doesn’t believe in himself at all; not to the degree that it becomes annoying, but definitely enough to make you want to hug him. He’s much braver than he thinks, and you can feel how badly he wants to do right by everyone. It doesn’t hurt that he is well aware of how ridiculous his own existence is, and is willing to laugh at it – but he also genuinely loves Christmas, both the kingdom and the holiday as you and I understand it, and somehow Raasch managed to capture a lot of the childhood wonder and delight in the holiday without making the grown-up part of me cringe. I think that was partly due to Coal’s unselfconsciousness about his own love for Christmas, and making him the first-person narrator meant that came through to the reader as well.
And while I adored the romance – more on that in a bit – it made me SO HAPPY that Coal’s relationship with his younger brother, Kris, and his best friend (and Kris’s secret crush) Iris, was so foundational to the story. The in-jokes and whatsapp groupchats and how they had each other’s backs 500%… It was a rollercoaster ride between laughing my head off at their antics and snark, and feeling my heart ache for how much they loved each other and were ready to fight for each other. Coal and Kris, especially, have the kind of relationship that people without siblings DREAM of (with very good reason!)
I really had started to think I’d made him up, a fever dream brought on by vodka and regret.
But he’s here, he’s real, and he’s disastrously hot, wearing a goddamn corset vest.
Which brings us to Hex, crown prince of Halloween and Coal’s not-so-eventual love interest. My perfectly poised, prim-and-proper goth child who looks illegally good in corset vests (it is a CRIME that they didn’t put him in one for the cover, imo!) and brings a dash of socialism to all this monarchy stuff. *Chef’s kiss* So much appreciation for Raasch refusing to utilise BORING bad-boy tropes and cliches for Hex, that would have been too easy and predictable; instead Hex gets to be someone much more complicated than he would have been in the hands of a lesser writer, with a lot of guilt and grief and a heart easily as big as Coal’s. It was fascinating how what he brought from the Autumn Holidays was so different from the political (and kinda-financial?) set-up of the Winter Holidays, and introducing Coal to Other Ways Of Doing Things was both plot-critical and necessary for growth for both boys. Yes yes yes, APPROVED!
every second of a life spent being the comedic relief has been saving up sincerity for him.
The romance? Delicious. Sweet, spiky, hilarious, both Coal and Hex inspiring each other (possibly my favourite element of a good romance) in a bunch of different ways, complicated by political shenanigans (some of which I saw coming, some of which I REALLY DID NOT: THE FUCK, SANTA?!) and the need to Be A Secret (because Coal’s meant to be marrying Iris, remember?) Also, plenty sexy, for readers who like that sort of thing. Me, I just flailed a lot because SO MANY FEEEEELS!

Draw me that map again. Take me beyond the edges. And then, and then, and then–
Like all the best romances (in my extremely limited experience) Kissmass delves into some surprisingly deep topics alongside its love story. I’ve already mentioned that Hex is dealing with guilt and grief, and Coal too, for that time he Massively Fucked Up. But Coal and Kris’ MIA mom – who left the family when they were kids and hasn’t been part of their lives since – is another brick in the foundation of this story, and the entire book revolves around their dad’s increasing and insidious awfulness. Santa’s not a moustache-twirling villain, but he’s the kind of parent who’ll make most of us feel cold and sick, especially if you have any experience with psychologically/verbally abusive authority figures – and that’s without even starting in on who he’s become as a monarch. How do you stand up to a parent like that? To a king like that? Can he be reasoned with? If he can’t, what other options are there? Coal and Hex are both crown princes, heirs to their respective thrones; what kind of monarchs do they want to be? What’s the role of the media in politics, how does it work as a filter between the ruling class and the public, how do the former use it to manipulate the latter?
It was thorny and crunchy and I was Most Extremely Pleased with it all.
I always joke that I’m going to dedicate my books to you, the reader.
But this one? I mean it. This book is for you.
I just want it to make you smile.
Raasch’s dedication at the beginning of the book is Kissmass in a nutshell: this one is going to make you grin. I cannot over-emphasise how much sheer FUN it is, how much it made some very grey days SPARKLE. This is the book I’m going to reread when I’m feeling low, and I WILL be giving it as Yule gift to all the readers in my life. For the pure enjoyment factor, it’s going on my Best of the Year list, and it is definitely a new favourite.
I can’t wait for book two, featuring Kris and *checks notes* the prince of Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m already crying with laughter just thinking about it!
If you have even the SLIGHTEST interest in ridiculous, escapist, just-a-little-magical romance, you need to read Nightmare Before Kissmass.
Then hit me up, and we’ll squee together about it!
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