I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch Series: Royals and Romance #1
Published by Bramble on October 8, 2024
Genres: Adult Fantasy Romance, Adult LGBTQ Romance
Pages: 368
Source: the publisher
Format: ARC
My Rating:
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Blurb:
Red, White & Royal Blue meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in a sexy, quirky romcom where the golden-hearted Prince of Christmas falls for the totally off-limits Prince of Halloween.
Featuring beautiful ruby sprayed edges!
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 commanded 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.
My Review
I was very excited when I first heard about this book. And when I picked it up, it was really good, different actually than what I’d expected, but in a good way! I really liked the way the author created this holiday world, where all the holidays had their own little cities and royal families, etc. The fact that Santa’s two sons were named Nicholas and Kris, you know, St. Nick and Kris Kringle? That was perfect. I loved the prince of Halloween too, Hex. Hex and Nicholas, who went by Coal, were so cute together. Coal was so much fun too. Of course we got to meet him right after he’d created a huge debacle by trying to fulfill all of one city’s unfilled Christmas letter wishes. Only by doing that, it created a huge hit on the economy of that city because of all the fallout. It was then that he met Hex, although he didn’t know who Hex was.
Santa, or Coal and Kris’s dad, was not the jovial benevolent man we think of. It came of course from the fact that their mother had left and so all three of them were suffering and dealing with their grief in their own way. Santa’s way was to get joy from other holidays in order to get it so that it was worldwide. However the way they got the joy wasn’t a great way once Coal found out how it really was done. Their dad decreed that Coal would marry the Easter princess Iris, who was Coal and Kris’s best friend, and also Kris might have liked her a little more, even if he’d never told her. When Halloween tried to do something to stop their combining like this, they set it up so that now Hex was going to compete to marry her and she would choose.
When they found out it was a fake setup, that Christmas intended to just keep Hex there in order to show his power and still get Coal to marry her. Things got a bit crazy and tense. Coal and Hex were actually the ones really into each other. They tried to come up with a way to stop this and make things better. Similar to how Halloween worked with the other fall holidays. And as you’d expect, things did not go smoothly. Including at one point Coal’s father finding out and forbidding it and trying to cause it to be stopped.
I won’t go on, as I think you should read it and see yourself. This is an adult romance, as we get sex scenes between Coal and Rex that are not closed door. I really loved this world and think that the next book, supposed to be about Kris, should be good too.
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This sounds perfect for the HoHoHoRAT.
It would be! If I hadn’t had an ARC that I needed to review I would have saved it for then.
I can’t wait to start this! I have so many October releases to read but I’ll definitely squeeze this in😁
It was really good. And could definitely be a read for closer to Christmas too!
Sounds like a cute idea for a series. Thanks.!
It does! I’m a little unsure about the second book, because I’d hoped it would be more of a hetero romance, just for a change, but I’m okay with continuing the characters this way.
I didn’t get picked for this one and it sounds great, but I’m glad to see how much you enjoyed it. I’ll have to fit it in still.
I hope you get a chance to read it. It was really good! Looking forward to the sequel too.