‘Tis The Season: Authors Talk Holidays is a special seasonal feature on Pop! Goes The Reader in which some of my favourite authors help me to celebrate the spirit of the season and spread a little holiday cheer. So, pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate and snuggle in by the fireside as they answer the question: “What does the holiday season mean to you?”
About Auriane Desombre
Auriane is the author of I Think I Love You, and works as a middle school teacher and freelance editor. She holds an MA in English Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing for Children & Young Adults. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Sammy, who is a certified bad boy.
There are many cheesy things that I could say about what the holidays mean to me, but if I look deep in my heart, I know that my answer must be the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe.
You know it: the Netflix original movie series A Christmas Prince and The Princess Switch, among others, overlap with each other to create the NCCU, a truly shocking and magical place where there are no rules. In our current Covid universe, where there are so many rules, a universe that encompasses both saving baby elephants and time-travelling medieval knights is exactly the place where I want to spend this holiday season.
I started this year’s dip into the NCCU before Thanksgiving, which is a bit of a cheat, but 2020 demanded an early release of that sweet sweet holiday serotonin. The Christmas Prince series is my favorite, because it is absolutely bonkers, and I started my yearly journey through the NCCU with Amber Moore’s path from editor of a magazine (a position that somehow makes her an underling to the writers, so we’re off on a great start) to princess of Aldovia. It’s followed by A Christmas Prince: Royal Wedding (or, as it should be called A Christmas Prince: Rise of the Proletariat, because there is a subplot in this film where the royal family does not pay their workers and the audience is expected to sympathize with a cancelled Christmas pageant instead of the striking workers!! Netflix, what!!).
Gearing up to spending the holidays in quarantine, with all the usual reasons for a happy holiday season just out of reach, I’m looking for new answers to what this season means to me. And if texting my best friend about the continuity errors in the NCCU is what it takes to create some connection this holiday season, who am I turn up my nose at a bad British accent?
Bad Christmas movies, like any bad movie, soar to their highest point when they manage to make you tear up at the ending after you’ve spent ninety minutes straight yelling at the screen because not one element of the plot has made a shred of sense so far. It’s the intersection of profound silliness (seriously, what is up with the dungeon ghost in A Christmas Prince: Royal Baby??) and genuine heart that makes these movies great.
After all, if Amber and Richard can go from being movie characters in The Princess Switch to flesh-and-blood guests at Margaret’s coronation at the end of The Princess Switch 2: Switched Again (let’s all pause for a minute to appreciate that title), what’s to stop us from finding new ways to be present for each other this distanced holiday season?
Title I Think I Love You
Author Auriane Desombre
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Publication Date March 2nd 2021 by Underlined
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon ● Chapters ● The Book Depository ● Barnes & Noble ● IndieBound
A YA contemporary rom com about two girls who start as rivals but after a twist of events, end up falling for one another – at least they think so. A pitch perfect queer romance – and it’s a paperback original!
Arch-nemeses Emma, a die-hard romantic, and more-practical minded Sophia find themselves competing against one another for a coveted first-prize trip to a film festival in Los Angeles…what happens if their rivalry turns into a romance? For fans of Becky Albertalli’s Leah on the Offbeat, full of laugh-out-loud humor and make-your-heart-melt moments.
