Holiday Gay

This is a collection of six upbeat short stories about Christmas holidays from a mixed bag of authors. As to locale, the stories take readers to a disco in Hawaii, to a bar in Queens, to New Year's Eve in the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, to Brooklyn, and to Times Square. In her introduction to the book, the editor writes an apt description in describing the stories as "seasonal romances with some naughty but nice twists". I found that to mean the stories were playful and saucy, with some, but not a lot of, explicit man-on-man sex. There is a smooth transition between the stories with no abrupt changes in mood or atmosphere. It is recommended as a pleasant and enjoyable light feel-good read.

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I received a review copy of the eBook for "Holiday Gay" from Riverdale Avenue Books via Netgalley. The comments about it are my own

A big thank you to Riverdale Avenue Books and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy in return for an honest review.

<i>Holiday Gay</i> is a book compiled of six short stories, all centring queer characters and relationships during the holidays. It's quite diverse, in the sense that it's not all just loveydovey stuff. In terms of diversity beyond that, don't expect too much. There are only gay men, and in one story two gay women are featured, but it's short, barely there, and written from a man's point of view. That, and the lack of female writers, were the only true disappointments I had with this book.

Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection! The foreword already set the mood, and the stories were easy to read. I would recommend reading one story at a time, to make sure they don't blend all into one. Out of the six stories, I absolutely loved four (one of them is NSFW, be warned!), and was pretty meh about the other two- one being the one featuring the gay women. I did love the '20s setting in that story, however, and the ending had me smiling broadly.

My favorite story I'd say is the third one, <i>A Tale of Aloha</i>, written by David Noh. The setting is beautiful and it's a lovely love story, but with a bittersweet ending that broke my heart, wanting to know what happened eventually.

In the first story, <i>Christmas is Cancelled</i>, I was uncomfortable with some of the words and descriptions used, as I felt they geared too much to stereotypes, but as I am not a gay man myself I don't know if that is just me, or an actual thing. Other than that, the dialogue felt a bit stilted at times, but nothing that really drew away from my enjoyment of the story.

A small note for Ryan Field: I loved <i>I saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus</i>, but I have to ask- where was the prep!? I know a lot of authors find writing that tedious but it's honestly so important. The lack of a condom gets explained, which was great, but then prep was completely non-existent, which made me feel kinda bad for Dennis.

I won't go too much into the stories, or the ones unmentioned, because this is really a collection you have to experience for yourself. Don't expect some out-of-this-world writing, or life changing stories. Just let yourself be entertained, be swept into the stories provided, wishing there was more of them.