A review by sapphistoire
The Holiday Detour by Jane Kolven

2.0

I was so excited to pick The Holiday Detour up because Christmas is my favourite holiday and there's genderqueer and Jewish rep in here, but I was sorely disappointed. The book follows Dana, who, on Christmas Eve, is making the journey home to be with her grandmother. However, on her way there her car completely breaks down at the side of the road. Luckily, Charlie, a pig farmer, is there to help her out and offers her a ride home, but not without some diversions on the way. Admittedly, this book does have some merits - I liked the writing style a lot, it's definitely one of the better written romance books I've read, and the plot was interesting with some tropes I really like getting to see (fake dating and forced proximity). However, and this is a big however, the genderqueer character's gender was not dealt with sensitively at all in this book. Near the start of the book Charlie reveals their gender and Dana asks what their 'preferred' pronouns are (we're off to a good start...not). Charlie explains that they/them are the pronouns they are the most comfortable with while stating that she/her is also fine, but heavily implying otherwise, and even explaining that their unsupportive family continues to use she/her. Every other character in the book refers to Charlie with they/them pronouns except Dana who almost makes an effort to keep using she/her. Dana is the character whose POV we read the book from, and every description of Charlie is describing them as a woman and using feminine descriptors. It's only after Dana is called out by one of Charlie's friends and Charlie explains for a second time why they use they/them pronouns that Dana starts using them - and that's at 60% of the way through the book. I could deal with the insta-love romance because it's what I expected from the book, but this was just very disappointing and I didn't feel comfortable continuing to slog through it.