The Nightmare Before Kissmas by Sara Raasch Review

Red, White & Royal Blue meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in a sexy, quirky rom-com where the golden-hearted Prince of Christmas falls for the totally off-limits Prince of Halloween.
 

Nicholas “Coal” Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.
 

But the heir to Christmas is soon commanded to do his he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.
 

Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand…and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar Hex, the Prince of Halloween.
 

It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other over a marriage of convenience that no one wants. And it all leads to one of the sweetest, sexiest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.

Falling somewhere in the area between being creatively genius vs a festivity-induced fever dream, The Nightmare Before Kissmas is light-hearted and cute dramedy that hits all the right beats one would expect for a holiday romance novel. Personifying popular holidays as magically inclined individuals reminiscent of Rise of the Guardians paired with the familial expectations and burdens of royalty akin to Casy McQuiston’s Red White and Royal Blue, the Nightmare Before Kissmas is constantly a lot of fun and a feel-good escapism read. And while it’s frequently cheesy and often tap dances on the line between being endearing and cringy, the plot is solid, featuring surprisingly ambitious commentary on the materialism and purpose of holidays as well as holiday politics in this fantasy-leaning version of the world.

Despite initially being a bit of a box office bomb, the 2012 animated film Rise of the Guardians and its source material The Guardians of Childhood series by William Joyce have since become sleeper hits thanks to the creative and charming way they personified popular holidays as magical beings and culture associated with said holidays. The Nightmare Before Kissmas features a lot of similar concepts but utilizes them for an adult romantic dramedy as opposed to children’s fantasy adventure. And instead of a singular character, Sara Raasch’s Royals and Romance series extends the concept by having entire royal family represent each holiday that individually operate the festivities and image of their namesake occasion. With the royal families and heirs each having light magical powers that operate using “joy”, the aggregate feelings of people experienced across the world also serving as a currency and power source, there’s a lot of potential for great slapstick comedy (Coal telling his brother Kris to shut up by filling his mouth magically with poisonous holly) as well as quietly magical and sweet moments (Hex entertaining young kids under the table with reindeer-shaped ghosts in the snow banks). While the magic isn’t technically grounded enough to be considered magical realism, its light-hearted use and presence adds nice ambiance and color instead of being the primary focus of the story.

The holiday and magic alone are a lot of fun, but Raasch combines that with a romance storyline that utilizes many tried and true tropes for good measure. There’s opposites attract (particularly the usual dark and light contrast), there’s the off-limits romance, fake dating on multiple fronts, there’s something for almost every type of romance reader. Playing on the long-running common dichotomy and rivalry of Halloween and Christmas enthusiasts, the Nightmare Before Kissmas perfectly pairs the two holidays with Coal and Hex respectively. Also, Coal is a hilariously punny name that works both for his distaste of the current Christmas traditions like coal in a stocking, and as a short-hand for Ni“chol”as (ba dum dum). The two guys have great chemistry and banter, though really the dialogue and humor in general throughout the book is excellent. While there’s certainly some steamy explicit scenes, the Nightmare Before Kissmas keeps them entirely clean and healthy (perhaps to Hex’s detriment) with a lot of humor that just works really well. The side characters of Coal’s younger brother Kris and their childhood friend and princess of Easter Iris also nicely round out the core group of friends and their camaraderie feels real and natural. One of the novel’s strongest elements is its frequent use of their group phone text/chat that closes out quite a few of the book’s chapters. The terrible Christmas puns, the jokes, repeated dragging of Coal by Kris and Iris, it’s chef’s kiss. Additionally, despite obviously not being a real romantic option in what’s clearly M/M romance story (though worth noting most are bi…), Iris’s development and personality far surpasses her character’s usual limited filler role in these kinds of novels. Not only is she hilarious and her friendship with Coal well written, but she’s also a devious and effective wing woman on multiple occasions.

Besides fake dating/romance elements and the usual holiday hijinks, the Nightmare Before Kissmas also has an unexpectedly compelling overall story that both the book’s synopsis and marketing fail to highlight. Behind the glitz and sparkle of Christmas cheer, there’s underhanded and devious political scheming used to assert Christmas’s dominance amongst the winter seasons. At first glance, the story’s premise of forcing Coal to marry his childhood best friend to the detriment of his brother Kris and the competition of suitors with Hex sounds like a random hot mess, hence my review’s initial fever dream comparison. And Coal drunkenly making out with Prince of Halloween Hex only to later fall hard for him when he’s forcibly engaged to Iris sounds conveniently contrived on paper. However, remarkably all the Nightmare Before Kissmas’s seemingly random storylines all make perfect sense within the context of the book’s ambitious political narrative involving the power and influence struggle between holidays. The recurring theme of holidays gaining and fading from popularity over time is spot-on in addition to what each holiday means to people (ie. Easter and Christmas being celebrated by many who are decidedly not religious and Halloween becoming increasingly more popular worldwide). Within Christmas specifically, the story has some good commentary on Christmas’s recent shifts towards materialism and forced familial traditions for the sake of the holiday, rather than focusing on the joy and magical feeling it was originally intended to have. While the thematic commentary isn’t particularly insightful or unique to the novel (in particular, a recurring theme of happiness being built on the foundation of small moments of joy is a bit clumsy and too on the nose), the creative way they’re woven into the fake dating rivalry competition storyline is actually great! The novel’s story is one that could’ve easily worked and had mass reader appeal without the additional underlying intention and strong character growth, so I fully appreciate Raasch’s ambition for the story to be something more than just cute and sexy fluff. That said, for readers looking for a straightforward and cute romance, the political holiday plotting and scheming takes up a large percentage of the book’s overall page count compared to Coal’s actual romance with Hex. While I personally loved the balance between the two, the holiday storyline can and will slow down the read for those that are not interested in the holiday commentary.

Comical and full of great dialogue, Raasch’s writing style is heavily modern and quite on-brand for the contemporary romance genre. Normally I’m a bit mixed on comedy stories that use excessive pop culture references that will quickly become dated. However, the jokes and references in the Nightmare Before Kissmas work quite well. While a good number of the references like “50 Shades of Sleighs” skew heavily towards the millennial  crowd and likely will fade over in the near future, there are enough references that will have some lasting relevancy like the meme of the original Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer movie’s script being misogynistic or It’s a Wonderful Life oddly being considered one of the greatest holiday movies despite being quite sad and serious (a holiday movie I’ve still yet to watch personally). While most of the book’s content is humorous or a bit thirsty, there are brief moments in between that are quite poignant and magical. Raasch’s portrayal of the holiday decor and scenery of the royal Christmas house/palace and North Pole Village has great visuals and while the prose clearly isn’t intended to be fully poetic or emotional, her writing style notably has more finesse and flair than the story and genre needs.

While generally solid across the board, if I had to nitpick something about the Nightmare Before Kissmas, it’s that the story’s ending and closing chapters leave quite a few plot threads unresolved and left in the air. While the Nightmare Before Kissmas’s resolution effectively covers Coal’s character growth and his foreshadowed assumption of the royal family’s oversight of Christmas, what actually happens to the management of the Christmas holiday in the end is vague and a possible alternative solution being far more complicated and nuanced than what this novel can effectively cover without substantially increasing its length (to be honest, I think this novel could’ve benefited from having another fifty pages or so). After how solidly plotted and compelling the negotiations around the behind-the-scenes holiday deal making are, that storyline just cuts off abruptly in favor of focusing on Coal and Hex’s relationship. And for how hyped the Christmas Eve ball and events leading up to Coal’s planned wedding are, I personally found the night itself and the events immediately following it to be a tad underwhelming and short. While Coal and Hex’s resolution is great, I would’ve liked to see a much more elaborate ending considering how good and extensive the other non-romance material was. Since a sequel novel had been announced not long after this novel was published, ordinarily I would’ve been fine with these plot threads left unresolved as breadcrumbs to encourage the reader to read the next entry in the series. However, having already read the synopsis and direction the sequel Go Luck Yourself appears to be heading, I have doubts if these plot threads will ever be properly resolved. Considering Go Luck Yourself’s main character is Coal’s brother Kris and has him involved with St. Patrick’s Day holiday, the story will at least address the cliffhanger the Nightmare Before Kissmas left with him and Iris. But we’ll see about the rest very soon as Go Luck Yourself is in my reading queue and moving up fast (I’ll be thrilled if Raasch proves me wrong when I read the sequel soon).

Delivering a lot of great humor and holiday-themed romance with a surprisingly great politics storyline, the Nightmare Before Kissmas is an excellent all-arounder that is sure to satisfy most romance readers one way or another. Raasch’s writing consistently delivers exactly what the novel is shooting for and has the right amount of ambition and lyrical flair to enhance the material without weighing down the light-hearted and cute tone. So far in 2025, I’ve read an unusually high percentage of queer romance or coming of age novels due to my limited KU subscription availability (queer fiction and romance is the most represented genre at the moment), but this is yet another highly rated M/M romance novel (4.5 rounded up) and an easy comfortable recommendation free of anything remotely triggering or unpleasant (unless one has unresolved Daddy issues…).