Sweet, hilarious, and adorable. I absolutely loved every single character (apart from Mark, obv) and I want to be friends with them all. Kit and Haf seems really well suited too, I'm definitely rooting for them to last.

Pure shenanigans! Like a ridiculous netflix holiday movie. Similar vibe to Boyfriend Material, but fat, sapphic, and disabled. Absolutely adored this and am already looking forward to reading it again next Christmas!

The only thing that felt off was the sex scene. I don’t like sex scenes in general, and while this one was fine, relatively tame, and  fit in the storyline, the tone of it was too different from the rest of the cozy shenanigans. 

⭐️⭐️ Two stars and a whole lot of disappointment

Perhaps I expected too much from Make You Mine This Christmas because it was an Illumicrate Afterlight pick and I usually like those, or maybe I just expected it would be amazing because I love a good sapphic romance, but this book didn't live up to even my lowest expectation—which is basically just that I enjoy it and don't feel like I wasted my money or time.

Truthfully, this book was kind of doomed from the offset because the audio narrator chose a voice for Haf that made me think of Kimberley Nixon as her character Josie Jones making her infamous munge in Fresh Meat and how aggravatingly annoying Josie is (whether or not she's cooking munge).
While that didn't help the situation, the vocal resemblance isn't fully to blame. Haf was super annoying and obnoxious, which felt like an unfair representation of ASD people, as an autistic person myself. It was sort of nice however that Christopher, who Haf had never met before, went along with her scheming when in real life it's hard to find people who will do that. In saying that, if Christopher hadn't joined in on Haf's mischief there would be no book and I wouldn't have wasted my time and money.

My biggest gripe with this book is that besides their meet cute at the bookstore, Haf and Kit didn't have a scrap of chemistry. There was so little spark between them that I got bored. I had to rewind the audiobook on multiple occasions to listen to chunks again because I completely checked out. There was just nothing there.
Haf had more chemistry with Cupid the baby reindeer than with Kit. Perhaps if Kit has gotten herself stranded in the middle of a lake and was about to be attacked by a goose until she was valiantly saved by Haf I might have felt a shred of something between the two women, but as it stands I didn't. Such a big set-up with the recommendation of one of the most famous sapphic works of all time, only to lead to Haf and Kit falling in love in five days? Really? This is the best you've got? I'm a massive lesbian and I cannot imagine a situation in which I could know a woman for five measly days and proclaim her to be "the love of my life" in front of not only my dearest friend, but also the woman's brother, his ex-girlfriend and a whole train station full of strangers. Bizarre! Is my lesbian membership revoked now?

I could get into the whole ~fake dating a man you just met so his ex thinks he's moved on and that somehow spiralling into spending the Christmas period with his family which includes his sister who you just flirted with in a bookstore but you didn't know who each other was until meeting a second time~ because it's not worth it at this point. I'm tired of it. No more fake dating of this type. I'm calling it. We've had enough.

Overall, Make You Mine This Christmas was just not it. Don't get me wrong, the hEDS representation was good and we need more of that in fiction across the board and I'd have liked Haf's experience autism to have at least a little mention instead of being subtext, but the story overall was so ehhhh that I'll probably forget it in a few days, which I'm looking forward to.
I stuck with it because it's pride month, but knowing how it ends I would tell my past self to DNF and move onto something better.

I read the German translation for language practice, and I highly recommend it (in whole or in part) for that purpose. The author's colloquial style and dialogue were perfect for a B2+ reader: I could always understand what was going on and didn't have to look up every other word, but still picked up plenty of vocabulary. The humor absolutely comes through in translation, which is a plus.

On the story side, this book was fine. It oscillates between being fun/entertaining versus contrived/drawn out. It could have been 1/4 shorter, and better for it. I'm all for cheesiness, but the wild

reindeer

chase, the

ring

, and the

Esther

nonsense were tedious and unnecessary. Toward the end, every time I thought we were about to fade to black, there was another scene. And another scene.

I probably wouldn't recommend this book to a friend because of the storytelling issues in the second half. Also, while most of the inclusivity rang true for me, Kit's EDS seemed to disappear at a few moments when it would have been inconvenient for the plot. It bugged me a little as a disabled reader because I was otherwise mostly happy with the representation (like Kit's very realistic feelings about her workplace).

Autistic coded (according to author’s note) and fat FMC
FMC with chronic illness (hEDS)
bisexual and lesbian main characters
non-binary side character

A diverse af book that is honest and genuine. It's not tokenism, it's representation. I LOVE IT!!!