Kiss Her Once for Me

Ellie has a perfect Christmas eve day/night with a woman who smells like bread, and then something goes awry which we have to wait to discover. A year later, she's lost her job as an animator and works at a coffee shop, and memories of this woman – Jack – linger. A rich guy asks her to marry him so he can inherit some money, and there's 200,000 in it for her. Cool, cool. When she meets his family, she finds out his sister Jacqueline is her ... well, you get it. She is trapped there for the next 8 days, including Christmas. 

Ellie has horrible parents, and so she really falls for the whole family, other than the mostly absentee father, and so this all factors into what's at stake. Oh, and Andrew – her fiance – is planning on giving Jack half the money. No pressure. 

Ellie and Jack had really nice chemistry and banter. The banter, across the board, was great. Alison Cochrun gives good banter. The grandmothers were the wacky old ladies you love to see. Ellie's friend Ari was everything! Could have used more Paul Hollywood – a dog, not the vaguely creepy handshake guy who really humiliated himself during Mexican Week. 

The book is interspersed with out of sequence snippets of Ellie and Jack's magical Christmas, and those were very sweet. They also spend a night in a cabin together, and I loved that. 

What didn't work for me is ... Okay, let me start by specifying Ellie made mistakes, but so did at least 3 other people ... what didn't work for me is how poorly Ellie was treated when the monetary aspect of the engagement came to light. Everyone was throwing stones in that glass house. Jack decides to be mad not just at not knowing this, but that hitting on/being attracted to her brother's fiance had made her feel bad. Okay? Why were you at peace with this minutes earlier? When Ellie told you she couldn't marry Andrew? But everyone is treating her as mercenary when she was in the process of walking away from the cash and when it was Andrew's idea. Jack kept a huge secret from Ellie the year before, which she never really apologized for, but has no patience for hearing Ellie out. 

I get that we needed things to become a little dire just from a pacing standpoint, so it couldn't be easily sorted out, but the pile on didn't feel organic or make sense. Also, Ellie seems to be set up to be humbled, but since she wasn't exactly a font of ego to begin with, that was harsh. And then at the end there's a moment where she is humiliated, and the person who humiliates her – while the reaction that created the humiliation was valid – seems to find it a bit funny. 

What the last portion of the book made clear is this was a story about fear holding Ellie back. I can't say this wasn't present, but when it's presented as THE thing, that didn't feel earned. I liked how she learned to take more chances, but I don't see a person who makes several of the choices she does as being as stuck as I'd have to believe her to be to really embrace this message. 

Overall, this was a nice holiday read, with great banter, and a couple I rooted for. And I hope Ari gets a book! 

“Your trauma is something that happened to you; it's not who you are.”

You know that feeling when you read a book and you just think, ‘This book is Mine. It's everything to me'? That's exactly how I felt reading Kiss Her Once For Me.

One of my favourite movies of all time is The Proposal and I immediately felt the same feeling I do when I watch that movie when I started to read this. I'm claiming this as the queer version and I'm taking no objections.

The highlight would have to be the characters. Each and every one of them felt so carefully crafted and fleshed out. They truly felt real to me and like I was able to feel their emotions and struggles through the book.

You need to give the author credit for the way we were able to read and understand Jack so profoundly without having a point of view of hers written. I think the biggest challenge of this book would have to be making out of it without falling in love with Ellie, Jack and the rest of the family. Andrew, Dylan, Katherine, the grandmas... This was such a beautiful combination of characters in one family and they never failed to have me giggling or crying.

Also, this is a tiny detail to some but as a non-binary person, it was so fantastic to see a character who was just like me.

This was my first book from this author but I think it's safe to say that after reading Kiss Her Once For Me, it won't be the last.

I love when queer books aren't about coming out, accepting their identity etc. I love discovering more and more books that treat their LGBTQ characters normal, like they are part of the community and society.
Yes is a cheesy rom com, with ideas taken from MLF love stories but I like the fact that I can finally relax and listen to a story about queer people without the coming out stress etc.
Yes it's predictable - to a certain degree - yes everything is too easy, etc but if you need a palate cleanser after a hard book, look no further

DNF? Technically I finished it, but I skimmed the rest of the book after the first 30 pages. The writing style and characters are simply not for me. Ellie is self-deprecating and very miserable, which isn't something I really want to read about. After those 30 pages, I looked at reviews and spoilers. And yeah, I didn't feel like fully reading it anymore knowing the outcome.

I was interested in this book after seeing a TikTok about it, and the premise seemed very interesting. But I don't think rom-com fake-dating and miscommunication tropes are for me anymore, they're just... overly formulaic and recycled but in different plot settings. Reading this book felt like a Wattpad sometimes, especially with the pop culture references. The webcomic Ellie is writing? It's so nitty gritty in detail that it takes me out of the experience that she's writing a webcomic - girl, this is a very detailed NOVEL now.

Jack and Andrew's family finds out about the arrangement/love trapezoid through Ellie's webcomic, which makes no sense at all. This implies Ellie made updates about this whole scenario, including more and more details, WHILE hanging out with them. That is so bizarre and kind of creepy. I highly doubt she actually did that too, but whatever is convenient to cause drama, right?

I don't like it when character development or growth happens in the last 2 chapters. I'm glad Ellie finally stands up for herself and decides to take better care of herself. I just wish it didn't take this entire scenario for her to realize that. I also am not convinced by the “fall in love in one day” scenario. Granted, I didn't fully read the flashbacks (they were boring for me since I already know Ellie falls madly in love with her anyway), so I don't know fully how “connected” they really are. But I do remember seeing a line where they both said, “It feels like I've known you forever”. Oh, this cliche... all of this in 6 hours? Seriously?

Lastly, the Korean erasure needs to be addressed. I don't expect a white, non-Korean author to know Korean culture well enough to write about it, but then it begs the question: why include it at all? Casual diverse representation is the norm now, but I can't help and wonder whether racial diversity is to fill a quota and appeal to more liberal and open-minded audience, or there is a genuine desire to have these characters in the story for a greater meaning, while paying ode to their heritage and background. Nothing stopped the author from making the Kim-Prescotts simply a monoracial Korean family. Why make them a biracial family if you were going to erase every aspect of their Korean culture? 2 of 3 grandmas are white, and the only Korean grandma they have is dead. I don't remember seeing any other incorporation of Korean culture into their family get-together besides a mention of Mrs. Kim's ribs, the use of "halmoni", and the Kim last name. There are far more Taylor Swift references than any acknowledgment or inclusion of their Korean heritage. Not to mention, we have another case of white man marries Korean/Asian wife but treats her horribly. Yes, I understand a need to have nuance and layered relationships but this felt really shallow.

i'm not gonna lie i mentally checked out while reading this book at like 40% but the book itself is not at fault, i loved the writing so much!!

i wholeheartedly believe that the reason for my 3 star rating is because im having a hard time focusing on reading rn & personally my mood while reading reflects on my ratings so i may reread this book at some point shdhjd

This was such a great book, I loved every single thing about it!
I was afraid this was gonna be like a standard holiday romance book with the Hallmark movies tropes, and it was partially the case. But it was so well done and so well thought out and the characters were so interesting and layered that I felt like it was a completely original book.
Also, you could tell that when a part of the book was more tropey, the author was really self-aware about it and the characters were sometimes joking about it.
There were many laugh out loud moments for me and the story was so well threaded that I never felt like it was stalling or losing it's rythm.
The beautiful cast of characters, the setting, the ambiance, the character developments and the romance were on point!

This book had elements that I loved and that I hated. I loved the moments when Ellie and Jack were together, but I wish this was written in third person so I could get more of the behind the scenes with Dylan and Andrew. I was equally invested in all of the points of the quadrangle. I also felt like if it were written to include their perspectives more, than we could have avoided some of the miscommunication crap with Ellie. It was almost like there wasn't enough of a conflict to keep the main couple apart so Cochrun kept blaming Ellie's anxiety for not having conversations. I'm glad that Ellie didn't have some resolution scene with her mom at the end, because sometimes you just have to let go of people who are not genuinely trying to be a part of your life. I liked that they showed the mixed family elements with Andrew and Jack's family because it reminded me of my experiences with my husband's family. 
I've said it so many times that I classify romance novels into two categories. The ones that I liked and the ones that mention Taylor Swift multiple times throughout. This was an almost exception because Celine Dion was mentioned too. (Before the Swifties get angry, my gripe is not with T-Swift, it's that her fans can't help themselves but to insert her into their books 8000 times to try to get her to notice them...) If I separate just the romance scenes, Jack being the hottest love interest ever, and the funny scenes, I liked this book a lot. As a whole, it was just middle of the road for me though.

3.0★

It's a very easy and quick book to read, but unfortunately, it took me this long cause I ended up not liking the story as much as I thought I would. I couldn't connect much with the characters, and I felt the overall plot was simply not for me. I understand why people loved this book so much, but I just couldn't get into it...
One last thing I'd like to comment on was the way her demisexuality was portrayed... It felt like “Oh I'm a straight guy, but I fell in love with this man, but I'm still straight, he's just the exception”, and I didn't like how suddenly Jack was “the exception” because that doesn't just happen... Especially when it comes to the asexual spectrum; though I'm ace and not demisexual so maybe it /is/ different and it can happen.

sometimes i wish i could shut off copyeditor mode when i read because otherwise i notice shit like "webcomic episode 4" being timestamped later in the day than "webcomic episode 5" when they're clearly chronological, and then i'm mildly annoyed. but despite "messy/anxious white MC meets magical butch of asian descent" immediately reminding me of casey mcquiston's one last stop (which i started the year with), the dialogue was definitely on the better side here. i didn't even feel like shaking any of the characters by the shoulders, which probably means the miscommunication and misunderstandings common in this genre weren't as offensive as they could've been, and i thought ellie's anxieties were portrayed fairly gracefully (though some in my book club found the constantness grating).

club gripes included loose ends, angry brown tertiary characters, inheritance tax, and only surface-level mentions of korean heritage. i was stuck around the 75-80% progression mark for weeks for some reason and i wasn't really sure what that meant, besides delaying getting into the conflict pages (or prioritizing watching exciting new episodes of television, ahem arcane).

stray note: the author commissioned some gorgeous story-related art from venessa vida kelley that had us wishing that had been the cover instead.

In the last couple days I started loading up my old Kindle with fresh reading material in anticipation of traveling for the holidays. A couple romance novellas, a thriller - nothing too crazy, just enough for a few minutes of stolen reading here and there. And then I finished Kiss Her Once For Me, and now nothing sounds good. This book has RUINED ME.

I have a memoir on my nightstand from the library, but I can't start that because I'm already listening to a heavy memoir. But also I can't bring myself to read another romance yet, ‘cause I'm still living in this one. And I read the first page of a very popular behemoth that my grandmother gave me like twelve years ago, and then sighed and tossed it aside because nothing is interesting anymore.

All I want is grand romantic speeches and fake relationships and drunk grandmas and love trapezoids and baked goods and falling snow.

This is Cochrun's second book, and I already read the first, and I'mma need her to get on the next one right now, kthanks. I will buy it immediately.