Love All Year: A Holidays Anthology

Love All Year: A Holidays Anthology (2020) Stacey Agdern, Hallie Alexander, Savannah J. Frierson, Felicia Grossman, Farah Heron, Celestine Martin, Ekaterine Xia

This is an anthology of romances set around holidays that are NOT Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Valentines Day.

Three Stars in The Sky by Stacey Agdern
It Happened One Yule by Celestine Martin
Queen Esther, Unmasked by Hallie Alexander
Legacy of Love by Savannah J. Frierson
Making Up With Eid Bae by Farah Heron
A Bridge of Magpies by Ekaterine Xia
The Sweet Spot by Felicia Grossman

I really wanted to like this anthology–the idea of it is marvelous. But very few of the stories worked for me–mostly because almost all of them were boinking stories, and that is almost never going to work for me in a short format. So it’s quite likely these stories will work for other people, who don’t have my quirks.

Three Stars in The Sky by Stacey Agdern is set during Sukkot, of two musicians who had dated in high school, but after he stood her up at prom she ended up writing a hit song based upon her feelings. He joined a boy band and now is a big solo artist, and says wants her song writing skills for his next album. But what he really wants is to make up for their past.

This was a fine second chance story. But I kept being confused as to what their past really was, which kept making me wonder what actually was happening. The fact that he was in a huge boy band isn’t really clear until late in the story, so he really came across as a complete jerk, as opposed to a confused teenager who was not in control of any of his life.

It Happened One Yule by Celestine Martin is a wicca story, and nothing here worked for me.

Queen Esther, Unmasked by Hallie Alexander was an historical set during Purim. She has broken her engagement, and may now be considered unmarriageable.

He’s locally famous for being a boxer, and ends up playing her opposite in the Purim play.

I feel like this needed to be a longer story. We were told a lot in a rush about the two characters, but I never really got a feel for either of them. Neither who they were or who they were perceived to be.

Legacy of Love by Savannah J. Frierson is a Juneteenth story, and again felt like it needed a little more. Also, I’m not sure that he deserved his second chance, because he had a lot to come back from, and I don’t feel like he really made up for it.

Making Up With Eid Bae by Farah Heron is an Eid story, and probably the one I liked the best. I actually believed his need to his second changes, and the fact they were so young when they had their falling out excused the behavior on both of their parts (Because: teenagers).

A Bridge of Magpies by Ekaterine Xia is set during the festival of Qixi. This was also an interesting story, although I initially was confused as to the relationship between Yulan and Verity, which made the rest of the story confusing, until I got that sorted.

The Sweet Spot by Felicia Grossman is set during Rosh Hashanah and is the other story that really didn’t work for me at all.

I know that for an anthology, only two out of seven stories that totally didn’t work for me isn’t that bad, but since I didn’t fall in love with any of the other stories, it made the whole thing feel like a disappointment.

Rating: 4/10

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