ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU

A longtime crush is complicated by a surprise pregnancy in Liasson's (The Way You Love Me, 2019, etc.) small-town holiday romance.

Kaitlyn Barnes has a lot going on with running her coffee shop, looking after her teenage niece, and now dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. After a one-night affair with Rafe Langdon, the man she’s loved for years, Kaitlyn is surprised to learn she’s pregnant, though she’s on two forms of birth control and never thought she’d have a baby at her age: 31. Kaitlyn vacillates between shock over the pregnancy and thinking about just how attractive Rafe is; both points are hammered home to an annoying degree. Rafe is painted as the town charmer, but his flirtatious mask hides a painful history: He still carries a significant amount of grief over the loss of his fiancee and their unborn child after a fatal car accident. Though he’s known Kaitlyn all his life, Rafe is wary of love, marriage, and fatherhood; he isn’t sure he can take another loss. Readers who enjoy small-town romances will find all the usual suspects: quaint shops, meddling yet good-natured townspeople, and twee holiday cheer. However, the way womanhood is intrinsically linked to motherhood here gives the book a sour taste. It’s an antiquated message set in a town that feels untouched by diversity or the modern world, given that women are getting pregnant well past age 31 these days. The friends-to-lovers romance is serviceable. Kaitlyn and Rafe are likable main characters, though reading about the minutiae of their day-to-day responsibilities grows tiresome. As a contemporary holiday romance, this is fine, but the book's deeper message is rather hurtful.

A cookie-cutter contemporary that’s oddly obsessed with motherhood.