Christmas (Tree Romances) in July
‘Tis the season for banging festive sentient objects!
By Graciella Delgado
It’s Christmas in July, so it’s time to dive into the Christmas-tinged world of Sentient Object Romances (and if not . . . then here’s your December reading list early). Now, with there being many a holiday-themed monster romance, it should be expected within the Sentient Object Romance realm as well. For your added benefit, I will also rank my list in order of favorites, ending with my top recommendation for this hyper-specific category.
All He Wants for Christmas is a Fingerling by JP Sayle
Beginning with All He Wants for Christmas is a Fingerling by JP Sayle, an omegaverse romance that is really only a holiday romance based on a technicality (that technicality being that the story just so happens to take place during Christmastime and nothing else holiday related happens).
The story follows a grumpy alpha werewolf shifter reluctantly falling in love with a fingerling potato shifter. This is not a story you go into for Christmas joy, but it is a book you go into to bear witness to how a human (ish) man engages in intimacy with his sentient fingerling potato lover while he is still in potato form. Hint: it involves some time in the kitchen, a wriggly sentient potato, and magical dirt!
“Could a potato mark his mate? I shivered with desire, then closed off the ideas my brain and wolf gave me.”
Merry Monsters by Bex Deveau
In the Christmas monster romance anthology, Merry Monsters by Bex Deveau (and many others), we have an actual Christmas tree romance. Perhaps the sweetest love story on the list and the only addition that directly involves our lord and savior Santa Claus. A lonely young woman with a tree-related last name writes a letter to Father Christmas asking for a partner. Santa, in all his jolly kindness and understanding, assumes the person writing to him is a sentient tree (naturally) and sends a sentient pine tree to answer the call. Our human main character is shocked to receive this mysterious living tree, but intrigued (and aroused) nonetheless.
Of all the Christmas object stories here, this is objectively the most Christmas-y, but not the only Chrstmas tree story on the list.
Unfortunately, this anthology is no longer available anywhere online and it is unclear why. Did my call for an absurd Christmas anthology all those years ago result in Christmas magic answering only temporarily? Was it all a dream? A glorious, horrifying, discombobulating dream?
Who’s to say?
If He Wanted To, He Wood by Tanya Lynn
Then there’s If He Wanted To, He Wood by Tanya Lynn. This polyamorous Christmas tree romance is about a different lonely young woman who visits a Christmas tree farm, stumbles across a trio of extremely attractive naked men, bangs them, and follows their panicked instructions to buy their Christmas tree selves (Christmas tree-sonas) moments before their transformation back into a sleep tree state. She follows their orders, purchases the trees, and journeys through an interesting yet bizarre insta-love dynamic with these three men cursed to be Christmas trees for the great crime of being players in their youth.
The way our narrator tackles her three relationships to break their collective mystical curse is very fairytale-esque in nature.
“‘Take us home. We’ll make this Christmas the best one yet,’ Ash whispers. I lick their offering off my face and lift each breast to lick more off and am greeted with the taste of winter fresh gum.”
Ravaged by the Gingerbread Man by Fannie Tucker
And last, but certainly not least, Ravaged by the Gingerbread Man by Fannie Tucker is a story that haunts me, not only because it was one of (if not THE) first Sentient Object Romance I ever read, but because it features a horny, living gingerbread man that only speaks in rhyme like the children’s nursery we’re so familiar with. We open with a lonely baker, wishing for connection this winter holiday season, bored before closing out the bakery on her own. She gets an idea, creates a person-sized gingerbread man, and . . . the night carries on . . . passionately.
It is, hands down, the funniest addition to this lineup with its absurd dialogue, circumstances, and author pen name that gets a giggle out of me anytime I remember it.
“Grinning at her with his wide icing mouth, he spoke in a high, cheery voice. ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! As much as I can! I need to fuck things, I’m the gingerbread man!’”
Whether you jump for joy when Christmas in July movie marathons play on TV, you’re bored out of your mind this Summer, or you want to get a head start on making a list (and checking it twice) for your December TBR, I hope you have a jolly good time experiencing these memorable tales blessed by Father Christmas himself.
