A Queer and Cozy Winter

by Ben Alderson

An Original Rainbow Crate Anthology. ISBN 9781958974490

Genres: Anthologies, LGBT, Queer

337 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2024

About the author

Ben Alderson is a #1 Amazon bestselling author. His stories are set in fantasy worlds filled with magic, adventure and MM romance. Ben lives in Oxfordshire and, when not writing, can be found reading, taking Winston - his Labrador - out for long walks, or obsessing over Marvel’s The Scarlet Witch.

Reviews

[Ben Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Avg. rating: 3.7 stars

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Queer and Cozy Christmas is a winter-themed anthology produced by RainbowCrate that collects 11 queer short stories about 30 pages each. (I don’t know who was responsible for editing, but this needed a couple more rounds because of the multiple typos and editing errors.)

Mini reviews of each short story:

A Christmas Gift is a cute contemporary romance about a married gay couple’s first Christmas apart that would probably be best appreciated by people who’ve read the book the characters are from. 3.5

The Keyhole Shrine is a heist fantasy with a diverse queer cast that really interested me and left me wondering if this story is a standalone or if it happened in the context of a bigger series. 4

The Body is a Hearth is a sapphic historical fantasy about two women with a painful history on a harrowing journey through a winter storm full of yearning and felt like a stolen moment. 4

Briar and the Candle Waltz is a romantasy about a human dancer and his fey lover/dance partner as they dance a fey ritual that is tense and entrancing. (Some pronoun confusion here as Briar is non-binary and is referred to as he/they from one sentence to the next) 4.5

Sir Gawain and His Green Knights is an MMM erotic retelling of the similarly titled narrative poem that delivers exactly that. 3.5

The Tale of Epiphany and Qoresis is a supernatural romance about a boy promised as a sacrifice to a God that was tender and cozy. (This is titled The Lair of Qoresis in the cover) 4

Mama Gloria’s Chocolate Caliente is a contemporary story about a girl fulfilling her abuela’s last wish for her to make her recipe that is well written but reads like a heavyhanded parable. 3.5

Labor of Love is a coming out story about an Iranian American woman coming out to her mother through food she made with the help of the ghosts of her relatives that was understated and nearly moving. 4

The BPD Witch’s Guide to Self-Care and Summoning is a sapphic romance about an app developer making a dating app for lesbian witches who accidentally summons a demon that reads like someone overdoing therapy talk and came across really vapid. I did not like this. (Also, if you are going to use acronyms, you have to explain it once first) 2

Fae Bride is a romantasy about a young woman and the mysterious fae woman she meets each Winter Solstice night who rescues her from her abusive stepparents that was atmospheric and darkly alluring. 4

How to Successfully Avoid Christmas Drinks is a high concept urban fantasy about a team of special booksellers who dive into books to rescue reader who accidentally fall into them. This was by far my favorite of the anthology and want a full length novel or even a whole series. 5

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a lovely little anthology to pick up the first week of 2025. It is Rainbow Crate’s first anthology and I’m obsessed and impressed. The stories are winter themed which makes the collection a perfect read for the dreary January days. I liked all of the stories but the two standouts to me were How to Successfully Avoid Christmas Drinks by Rosie Talbot and Mamá Gloria’s Chocolate Caliente by Natalia Hernandez. I can’t wait to reread this anthology every year. Oh and all of the different representations in the book are chef’s kiss.

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a delightful Christmas read! It's a mixture of fantasy and contemporary short stories, although most of them are more like novelettes. While I didn't enjoy every story, some of them were fantastic.

My favourites were: Rosie Talbot's How to Successfully Avoid Christmas Drinks, in which booksellers have to enter a romantasy novel to rescue a reader who was a little too immersed in the world; and Naseem Jamnia's Labor of Love, in which an Iranian-American woman struggles to cook her mother's favourite Iranian recipe, only for her dead relative's ghosts to appear, criticise her apartment, give her cooking advice, and help her prepare to come out to her family.

Then there were some stories, like Natalia Hernandez's Mamá Gloria’s Chocolate Caliente, that normally wouldn't have worked for me but hit the perfect note when read on Christmas morning.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Christmas Gift by Ben Alderson and Laura R Samotin: 2/5*
The Keyhole Shrine by Claudie Arseneault: 3/5*
The Body is a Hearth by Anna Burke: 4/5*
Briar and the Candle Waltz by Kellen Graves: 4/5*
Sir Gawain and his Green Knights by Ian Haramaki: 2/5*
The Tale of Epiphany and Qoresis by Noah Hawthorne: 4/5*
Mamá Gloria’s Chocolate Caliente by Natalia Hernandez: 4/5*
Labor of Love by Naseem Jamnia: 3/5*
The BPD Witch’s Guide to Self-Care and Summoning by Tamara Jeree: 2/5*
Fae Bride by S D Simper: 2/5*
How to Successfully Avoid Christmas Drinks by Rosie Talbot: 3/5*

[George Hobbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories can be a lovely way to spend an afternoon curled up with a cup of tea. It's a bit like having different friends dropping in for a quick visit. The problem is, there are some friends that you enjoy but don't quite get.Then there are the friends that are fascinating and you want to hear more from them, but they are here only briefly before they are off again.
A diverse collection of winter themed tales with a wide variety of themes and characters.

[Reese · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite stories of this collection were Briar and the Candle Waltz by Kellan Graves (I really need to read The Fox and the Dryad) and How to Successfully Avoid Christmas Drinks by Rosie Talbot.

I also enjoyed the worldbuilding of The Keyhole Shrine by Claudie Arseneault.

[Becky Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting collection of stories! Fun, sweet reads, all of them!!