Happy Holidays, romcom lovers! I’m rolling out a holiday special just for you: 12 beloved holiday tropes in six delicious, funny romcom short stories centered on one magical (fictional) block in San Francisco.
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Delicious romcom bonbons of holiday delight
What happens when…
…Jewish Santa meets the woman of his dreams—and has eight dates to convince her to be his girlfriend?
…two rival bakers turn up the heat for Christmas?
…a disaffected billionaire goes undercover as a barista for the holidays and meets an artist who turns his world inside out?
…a fake marriage that ends on Christmas Day has turned real for both women—but they don’t know how to tell each other?
…a grumpy Christmas shop owner hires the holiday’s biggest fan to work with her?
These stories are less spicy than my longer work (not enough room to do the intimate scenes justice in a short story). They include gay, sapphic, and male/female love stories.
Subscribe for free to get all these, plus a bonus epilogue with one more happy ending in a second chance, rock star romantic story.
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https://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/cover.jpg22501410Lorelai Tarlowhttps://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Lorelai-signature-simple.pngLorelai Tarlow2025-12-19 17:15:302026-02-04 15:49:05Introducing the 12 Tropes of Christmas
These closed-door romance novels pack enough emotional heft to satisfy even a spice fan like me.
Some romance readers are unrepentant smut lovers, the spicier the better, while others prefer to leave the sex to their imagination. I’m a spice fan. I want to go all the way into the bedroom in a romance novel. For those who think this is prurient (you’re probably not reading this newsletter, but anyway), a good sex scene isn’t about titillation—or not only about that. Bedroom scenes show the connection building between the characters and allow them to express the feelings they can’t yet put into words.
But I recognize that sex isn’t the only way to show the growing feelings the main characters have for one another. I can get a charge from a romance where the friskiness happens behind closed doors. One of my all-time favorite romcoms, Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, explicitly shuts the reader out of the bedroom.
I recently read two novels that not only hummed to themselves when their protagonists got it on but also broke some of my personal rules, spending far too much time without the love interests in the same scene. Yet I adored both these books and heartily recommend them. The strength of the narrative voice carried each story, and it didn’t hurt that both are filled with colorful British slang. The Anglofilia is strong in me.
If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane
I heard about If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlane on the r/RomanceBooks. This subreddit is a great place for readers and writers of romance to hang out; I’ve learned a lot about what people like and don’t like, gotten an overwhelming number of recommendations to add to my TBR list, and found community with like-minded romance lovers. In this case, a poster had recently been through a divorce and made a specific request for a book showing a woman getting back on her feet after a devastating split. McFarlane’s book fits the bill perfectly.
If I Never Met You has a strong romance plot and a happy ending, but I would place it on the line between women’s fiction and romance. The novel spends a lot of time processing the shocking breakup when Laurie’s long-term partner upends her complacent life by walking out of it. A fake relationship with Jamie, a young, brash lawyer at the firm where Laurie and her ex work, serves both their needs. Jamie hopes to gain a promotion, and Laurie hopes that seeing her with another man will make her ex realize his error.
Set in Manchester, the book is filled with Britspeak, including many idioms I don’t understand. For some unknown reason, reading words I don’t know, especially euphonious ones like bad bollock, is my happy place. I didn’t catch most of the cultural references, but I had a great time trying to puzzle out the meaning from context.
If you’re looking for a book to reassure you that life gets better after a breakup, or just a well-written book with highly likable main characters, If I Never Met You is a great read.
Humor level: not haha funny, but lots of humor
Spice level: closed door
Tropes: breakup, age gap, enemies to lovers, fake dating
Wish You Weren’t Here by Portia Macintosh
Portia Macintosh’s novel, Wish You Weren’t Here, follows in the hallowed tradition of Bridget Jones’ Diary with a hapless heroine who drinks too much and bumbles from one hilarious disaster to another. And, of course, there’s more to her than she realizes at the start of the book.
The book starts with Lana hooking up with Ethan, who is clearly the perfect man for her. Only they seem to leave a trail of havoc when they’re together, so they quickly decide to stop seeing each other. The book skips to two years later, as Lana is getting ready for her half-sister’s destination wedding in Australia. After several disastrous attempts to find a date to take with her, she accepts Ethan’s offer to come along on the condition that nothing can happen between them. That is, of course, a promise they can’t keep.
Humor level: Bridget Jones level funny
Spice level: closed door
Tropes: second chance, fake dating, family reconciliation, secret millionaire
I promised weekly posts, and I haven’t kept that promise this month because I’m traveling. On the positive side, I’ve gotten lots of ideas for my writing, both my romance stories and for Rom-Com Ratatouille.
I’m on the road for another two weeks, and I’m going to try to do better, but no promises. Instead, here are some pictures of Antwerp.
Side note: The third photo is the Antwerp Central train station, the site of several great flash mobs, including the one below, which got me hooked on flash mobs and wanting to make that the grand gesture in all my books. The video is a bit degraded, but it still ranks as one of the top flash mobs of all time in my book.
One of the things I love about traveling, especially where English is not the local language, is the feeling of being a fish out of water. I like absorbing other cultures, hearing people speaking in languages I mostly don’t understand, and sampling different foods. It’s a way of seeing myself that I don’t have access to at home; one of the ways I get to know myself better is by traveling.
On this trip, I’m having a deeper experience than usual. The Antwerp neighborhood that is our home base is mostly Muslim. Walking out to the market street to get groceries this weekend, I was one of a handful of adult women among the throngs whose arms weren’t covered and who wasn’t wearing a hijab. I found myself looking for other women with uncovered heads as a way of reassuring myself that it was okay for me to be there. No one said or did anything to make me feel uncomfortable; this was all internal, and I realize my experience as a White person isn’t the same as a person of color, even when I’m in the minority. I’m grateful for the experience, which reminded me that I can play a part in making everyone feel welcome on streets that feel like home to me, especially those who may feel different.
https://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Trade-houses-Antwerp-1-scaled.jpeg19202560Lorelai Tarlowhttps://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Lorelai-signature-simple.pngLorelai Tarlow2025-07-27 10:57:172025-10-09 18:13:25Dispatch from Europe: Two British Romances that Lead with their Heroines
The one thing that makes every romance novel delightful—at least in my eyes—is the HEA: the happily ever after. A good romance lets you feel with the characters, through their hopes and despairs, and that journey is delicious. Even a so-so romance can be a fun journey.
But when I read a book that not only gives me the pleasure of watching two characters draw inexorably closer but also weaves delight into every line…well, that’s everything. I’m in love.
You can get a lot wrong and still write a good romance
I had an experience recently that I just can’t shake, probably because it made me wonder what I’m doing wrong (or right) in my own writing. I read a book that many romance fans love, and I hated it as much as I loved it. The plot was engaging, the setting was interesting, the backstories were revealed at just the right pace, and the characters were—mostly—appealing. At the end of every chapter, I wanted to turn the page and keep rereading.
But the farther I went in the book, the more I questioned my drive to keep going because it was just. So. Badly. Written. Worse, this was not a self-published stumble but a book from a major publisher and one that is beloved by readers.
So why did I sweat over every sentence in my manuscript before handing it off to my agent to submit to publishers? Was that a waste of time? I found the answer in Hotel of Secrets, a book with sentences so well written and just darn delightful, I read them over just for the pleasure of it.
Diana Biller’s Hotel of Secrets gets everything right
Diana Biller’s writing is masterful, weaving a plot laced with intrigue and danger and wrapped around the minutiae of real historical events. Like the New Year’s ball in the opening scene, the book is an intricate dance, with beautifully drawn characters and sparkling dialogue.
Hotel of Secrets is set in Vienna in 1877. Maria Wallner’s goal is to bring her family’s once-storied hotel back to the status it had before her mother ran it into the ground. She brushes off the interest in whether she will find The Man—the one who would become the father of the one daughter each woman in her matrilineal line bears—in the coming year. When she’s saved from an out-of-control carriage by a stern man with a luscious mouth who matches the description of The Man given to her the night before, the encounter leaves both of them off kilter, though for different reasons.
Eli Whittaker, strait-laced and serious US Treasury agent, has come to Vienna to solve a mystery, something he plans to do quickly then return home. He doesn’t plan to get swept up in the swirl of intrigue surrounding the Hotel Wallner—and Maria—but of course he does.
What makes this book wonderful is that, although dedicated romance readers know the steps on this journey as the two MCs grow closer, the events along the way and the quirks of their characters are unpredictable in the best way. The historical romance is wrapped in a mystery Maria and Eli must solve together. It’s an unexpected journey filled with wit and humor, a book that stands up as an excellent read in any genre. Reading it lit up my brain as it fired up my heart.
More things I love about this book
I adore historical romance. I’m happy reading Sarah Maclean any day of the week. But reading about the trials and tribulations of earls and lords and whatnot gets tiring after a while. Since I learn most of my history from reading novels, it was refreshing to follow characters in different levels of society and a setting where mores about premarital sex were less rigid. And (spoiler alert) the character who loses their virginity is not Maria. Love that.
Tropes: historical romance, mystery, opposites attract, first lover
Spice Level: 3 out of 5
Humor level: Every page is infused with delightfully witty prose, the kind of humor that feeds the soul.
‘m cooking up bonus content—a short story full of romance and humor and enemies to lovers—for new subscribers, and those who are already subscribed will get the goodies, too. So if you’re a subscriber—thank you! And you aren’t getting my weekly posts in your inbox, now is a great time to sign up.
https://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Hotel-of-Secrets-banner-image.jpg12602240Lorelai Tarlowhttps://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Lorelai-signature-simple.pngLorelai Tarlow2025-06-20 16:51:012025-10-09 18:14:37A Buffet of Delights: Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller
I love romance novellas. I read plenty of full-length books (and I write full-length books because every time I start out to write something short, I end up adding to the plot until it blows past novella length), but novellas are delightful. If I have time — if I’m on an airplane or it’s a really slow weekend — I can read one in a day. (Yes, I can read a full-length book in a day, and I’ve done it, but I lose a lot of sleep and refuse to speak to anyone. It’s not pretty.)
Also, I’m all about the happily ever after, and you get to that faster in a novella, so yay!
The only thing that makes me happier than a novella is a rom-com novella with appealing characters and a hysterical premise that turns a favorite trope on its head. That’s what I got with Sara Whitney’s My Fake Bad Boyfriend.
A love affair with holiday romances
I came across My Fake Bad Boyfriend when I went on a jag of holiday romance reading during my winter vacation. But it’s not Christmas now, so why am I recommending this book now, when the nearest holiday is Valentine’s Day? Because the holiday cheer is simply the backdrop for a delightful, bite-sized romance, and I don’t want to wait until the end of the year to recommend it. Really, you should read it now. You won’t regret it.
Holiday rom-com movies led me back into romance novels after I moved on to other genres. I was a little down during the Thanksgiving to Christmas stretch, so I started a project to watch every single holiday romance I could find during those weeks. For the first couple of years, I was watching during every spare moment, streaming movies while I brushed my teeth to try to see them all. Watching the movies led to reading the books and, now, writing them. So, thank you, Hallmark channel.
With the avalanche of new rom-coms, I’ve given up on watching every one. I watch as many of the new releases as I can — no Christmas movie too smarmy for me to waste my time on! — and repeat some of my faves each year. Love Hard, Holidate, and 12 Dates of Christmas are among the greats. I would watch any of those movies any time of year because they always cheer me up. So why not read a Christmas rom-com in February?
A hilarious twist on fake dating
Fake dating is one of the least believable romance tropes but so what because it’s just the best. Two people thrown together, pretending until it gets real — what’s not to like? But My Fake Bad Boyfriend, as the title suggests, takes this trope to new heights.
Darby is sick of her family bugging her about not having a boyfriend, so she comes up with a plan to shut them up once and for all. She’ll go home for the holidays with the worst boyfriend ever. They’ll be relieved when she shows up alone the following year.
Gabe steps in to play the part as a favor to one of Darby’s friends and because he’s at loose ends over the holidays. And, because he’s fundamentally a good guy, he commits to helping Darby by being the worst guy in front of her family. He’s rude, demanding, and ungrateful — and the scenarios the two of them come up with to horrify her family are so. Damn. Funny. This is one of those books where I can’t stop playing choice scenes over in my mind because they are fun, fun, fun.
Beneath the act, of course, there’s a growing connection between Darby and Gabe, which will make it hecka awkward if (when) their relationship becomes real. No spoilers. Read the book. Buy it on Apple or Kobo.
Bonus: Whitney has another holiday novella about Darby’s brother. Very sweet and worth reading, but not as funny, and I’m all about the funny.
https://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Fake-dating-2.jpg6801024Lorelai Tarlowhttps://lorelaitarlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Lorelai-signature-simple.pngLorelai Tarlow2025-02-08 03:40:402025-10-09 18:15:48My Fake Bad Boyfriend: A bite-sized, laugh-out-loud delight
