It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Smut-mas . . . The 12 Days of Christmas Rom-Com Reviews

I'll admit it. I'm a basic bitch. I'll side-eye the hell out of you if you were to label me as such the rest of the year, but in the sweet spot of post-Halloween-candy-indulgence and haul out the holly, I'm happy to be a pumpkin spice swilling, Hallmark holiday movie binging, candy-cane manicured basic bitch.

As one of my favorite former Real Housewives was wont to crow through her collagen-enhanced lips, I "own it". (RIP Rinna, 2014-2022)

Having eschewed romance (mea culpa) for most of my adult reading life - it's not like I'm expounding on the myriad merits of the enemies-to-red-hot-lovers trope with my AP Literature classes - I fell down the rabbit hole of ROMANCE with my New Year's Resolution to read a book a week, all of the same genre, in 2024. Now hooked, a reluctant romance reader if ever there were, I'm ramping up at the end of the year (making up for a few missed weeks of reading when I was trekking through the Amazon over the summer) to end strong. Thus was born: 12 Days of New (or at least new to me) Rom-Coms Reviews.

While I, like many of us, spent my formative years indulging in my family's Christmas traditions, I've spent the last month indulging in one of my own: Holiday Christmas rom-coms. Books, not movies. Not that there's anything wrong with the movies . . . except for the fact that I want more to show for two hours of my life spent in front of the screen (as though suffering through commercials on - gasp - basic cable wasn't bad enough) than a chaste kiss at the end of the film when the big city ad exec decides she's giving it all up to market the small-town hero single dad's pine tree farm.

If I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, I want a white Christmas, with all the Noel naughtiness (I'll let you fill in that blank) that entails.

I want alpha males - preferably of the billionaire variety but, in a pinch, I'll settle for hockey players whose sticks are almost too hard to handle or brothers' brawny best friends who have been secretly crushing on the girl next door. Men who are between 6'1" and 6'5" (the romantic ideal, apparently) whose stockings don't need to be stuffed since we're told, in no small detail, just how many inches of Yuletide pleasure good girls (or, better yet, not-so-good girls) get over the holiday season. Again, love me some Hallmark movies, but the deviant elf in me wants more than C-list actors who are approachably handsome enough to make you think you'd have a shot at them in real life. I want carnal pleasures, Christmas edition, and festive foreplay and, the cherry on the Buche de Noel of Christmas rom-coms, illicit holiday hookups with happy endings, of both the literal and metaphorical varieties.

So join me as I bring you my musings on the holiday ho-ho-hoeing, tinsel-strewn trysts, and, of course, as many Santa-referencing sex scenes (looking at you, ubiquitous coming down the chimney puns) as the merry muses of Rom-Com will bestow upon us. Check them out and let me know what you think as I make my way through the naughty list of new(ish) Christmas copulators and their seasonal shenanigans.