The Utahraptor stood tall — twelve feet tall — before her, clothed only in his feathers and a jaunty Santa hat. His massive hocks rested half-on the lawn, crushing the gentle brush of snow that had fallen earlier that morning, and in one of his little hands he carried a large tin of Quality Street chocolates.
Okay, I can explain…I’ve never read anything like this before, and while my first instinct is to say that this follows the plot of a Hallmark Christmas movie — but with a hunky dinosaur love interest — I would have to then admit that I’ve never seen a Hallmark Christmas movie. But I’ve been really busy lately, and I was looking for something short and mindless, and honestly, All I Want for Christmas is Utahraptor is not the worst book I’ve ever read, by a long shot. Author Lola Faust (a pseudonym, apparently) doesn’t take the subject matter seriously, this is full on camp — with just the right amount of “follow your heart” and “love is love”, and aren’t those the themes explored in historical pulp fiction? Didn’t they used to write about sexy vampires as code for the queer love they weren't allowed to write about? I might not have gone into this thinking that I was the true target audience, but I was totally entertained…and maybe a tiny bit moved. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
In her senior year they’d met Rob, a PhD student from Australia, who was studying the implications of DNA deterioration on the culture of dinosaur populations in Tasmania. Holly had been captivated by his interest in dinos; he was the first person she’d met in the wider world who took dino culture seriously, seeing it as a genuine foundational aspect of dino society rather than a veneer imposed on them by human society, seeing dinos as fully conscious, fully sentient beings who deserved equality and consideration.
Holly Grant lives with her ultrarich boyfriend in Chicago, selling thrifted antiques in an online shop. They’ve been together for four years with no engagement (let alone marriage) on the horizon, and as Thad spends ever more time as a
The Utahraptor brought his muzzle to Holly’s mouth and nuzzled. The little feathers on his cheeks tickled her as he rolled his lizard-lips against hers, careful not to slice her open with his sharp predator teeth. It was the strangest and most alluring kiss Holly had ever received.
“Is this okay?” Rocky whispered to her, a glorious fount of meat-breath that bathed her face in a delicate mist of saliva.
“Yes,” whispered Holly. “Yes, it’s wonderful.”
An explicit scene does follow, but it’s so campy and implausible that I don’t think it’s meant to be taken seriously (he begins by exploring her “love-swamp, moist and humid as the Cretaceous jungle the Utahraptor’s ancestors would have stalked through in their search for food,” and that made me guffaw.) And I see other readers are pleased that Rocky asks for consent at every stage, but some state that there ought to be a trigger warning for Holly cheating on Thad, even though he was really a jerk and Holly had already decided that the relationship was over. I offer these points to underline that I am not the usual reader of Romance or Erotica, so I’m not critical of the tropes, just reporting my experience.
I will also note that some reviewers didn’t like where the story went “religious”, but this is Utah, and while Holly’s Dad was a non-practising Mormon (having lost his faith when his wife died of cancer years before), I appreciated his acceptance of the daughter-dino relationship:
“The Church is a human institution. We built it to honour God — but humans built it, and humans are fallible. The bond between a parent and child, though…that is God’s own work. And loving you, whatever choices you make, is loving God.”
I’m no expert on the genre, but I didn’t hate this.
