Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by Maureen Johnson, John Green and Lauren Myracle | Rating: ★★★★☆

I always had this idea that you should never give up a happy middle in the hopes of a happy ending, because there is no such thing as a happy ending. Do you know what I mean? There is so much to lose.

Some of the best, and definitely the funnest, young adult authors back in 2008 (who are, still, amongst their best) were brought together with Let It Snow, a holiday anthology filled with three short stories from each. They’re romantic, they’re sweet and they’re definitely out of a cute little holiday film. Or, well, should be–that’s how pleasant they are to read!

Maureen Jonson, John Green and Lauren Myracle each tied up a personal tone, a voice for three separate narrators, wove it all together and created a story that was sure to delight fans. It’s impossible not to smile at any of the stories within and the romance that follows.

Years later, I still find myself completely enamored with this snow storm and these characters. Rereading it feels like a nod to seasons greetings and old friends. In other words… it’s warm and fuzzy.

‘Tis the season to be… Jubilee?

I Will Always Love You (GG #12) created by Cecily von Ziegesar | Rating: ★★★★★

They chose each other.

Just then, the dark sky lit up with fireworks. A cab sailing the street honked in celebration . In the night air, Nate thought he could hear Serena and Blair's laughter, though he knew that was impossible; they were too far away by now.

But as we know, in this city anything is possible.

Flashback to 2008 or 2009: in a surprising move due to the popularity of the then-hit television series, Gossip Girl came back for one final look into our beloved teenagers lives as they explore adulthood and come home for the holidays during breaks in university. Much like the final books and spin-offs of the original series, it is penned a ghost writer and not Cecily herself.

I Will Always Love You, or as I like to call it: the pitiful (but still fun) attempt at drawing in fans of the television series and unnecessarily destroying the characteristics of the books, takes place over the course of four years and is told in the usual rotating narration and blog entries. We’re split up to focus ONLY on the four years of holidays our kids have as breaks from classes.

(I’m being a bit dramatic: the installment wasn’t horrible it just wasn’t Gossip Girl in the way longtime readers wanted it to be. There were some redeeming qualities to it, though, like the endgames. Which is why I've still given it a high review like the rest of the series.)

Pretty Little Secrets (PLL #4.5) by Sara Shepard | Rating: ★★★☆☆

Next up on my Christmas friendly list of recommendations and reviews is a collection of holiday stories set in the Pretty Little Liars universe, planted between the first A arch and the second. It’s Christmas time in Rosewood and our girls are up to a lot. Sara Shepard brings us four short stories, one for each of our liars, and shows us just what the girls were up to between gaps in time.

“But what’s the point of it?” it serves no real substance to any plots in the future of the series. Here’s the thing, kids: it’s just a collection of holiday stories. Short stories set in the winter, in between the darkness that they face. It is meant to give us a glimpse of what they are like when A is only in the shadows and Sara succeeds at that. It’s cute. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to, you won’t get lost if you choose not to.

But it’s still fun for the holidays!

That’s all you need to know, really. Think about that time you wrote a fluffy fanfiction about your OTP, or a subplot to a story you were working on or something that just was for fun and enjoyable. That’s essentially what that is. A little treat in between timelines to lighten the load. It does its job and is just a treat for longtime readers.

When I heard about this little guy–I was surprisingly oblivious towards it for at least a year and I only found out about it because it was only $3 at BAM in the bargain bin–I did a little embarrassing happy dance in the bookstore. No, don’t look at me like that, I’m not embellishing. I really did do a little jig.

My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins | Rating: ★★★★☆

Spinning back around to my original focus of the month–damn health got in the way, didn’t it?–Christmas. Or rather, holiday themed stories. It would seem that the most obvious pick of recent releases would be My True Love Gave to Me, a collection of some of the most delightful holiday stories told by the best of today’s young adult authors, but the truth was I didn’t actually finish it until…

FIVE MINUTES AGO? Okay hear me out, I have a good reason!

I bought myself a copy of the book last year and read the first three or four stories only to find that one of my best friends couldn’t afford to get himself something that year (he spent his money on family and friends and of course his bills and such) so I asked him, “Is there anything else you would want?”

(I, of course, already had a present for him and gave it to him earlier that week with strict orders not to open it until at least Christmas Eve. I played it off that I wasn’t about to buy him more so it wouldn’t make him feel bad. He probably didn’t buy it all that much but is a good sport… sometimes.)

The list was pretty short considering his varied taste but it did include this little guy (he is a massive fan of Gayle Forman and David Levithan) and given the bad news that there is only one book store in my area (and no way was I driving to Chicago a week before Christmas–imagine the traffic!), all leading up to there not being any copies left in stock, I decided to wrap up my copy with the rest from his list as opposed to giving up on completing his want list.

Mistletoe: Four Holiday Stories by Various Authors | Rating: ★★★☆☆

Starting off my celebration and talks of stories that fit in with the holidays wonderfully, the first collection of holiday themed stories that comes to my mind is Mistletoe. In fact, it was the very first collection of four holiday stories that I’d ever picked up, due to my love of Melissa de la Cruz and Aimee Friedman.

While Mistletoe: Four Holiday Stories has the promise of a lot of fluffy goodness, it isn’t the best release out there. I loved all the stories in it once upon a time, but upon my reread of it last week, I’d discovered that only two of these stories still warmed me up. This isn’t to say that the short stories aren’t good, because that’s completely untrue, it’s just that they seemed to have… well, not aged well.

I’ll start with the first story from the collection. If I were you I wouldn’t expect me to go in story order, though.

At the time of its original release, I didn’t know much about Hailey Abbot’s work. My [then] best friend was once obsessed with her Boys series, and I just couldn’t get into it at the time. Which surprised me when I found that I loved her story in this one.