Review: "All I Want for Christmas Is Utahraptor" by Lola Faust

All I Want for Christmas Is Utahraptor by Lola Faust
Published December 2023 via Storm Crow Press
★★★★

Lola Faust is back with a Christmas story, and here's the list of content warnings:

Christmas (trees and otherwise), jewelry, Jeff Koontz, coffee, capitalism, generational wealth, management consulting, private equity, Utah, Chicago, Australia, Etsy, antiques, cigars, cottages, mountains, lakes, ducks, fishing, dysfunctional families, functional families, previous loss of a parent, financial abuse, breakups, dinosaurs, dinosaur sex, feathers, dinosaur feathers, high school, hockey, Canadians, universities, Tinder, alcoholism, food trucks, car dealerships, creepy older men, vintage buses, casseroles, miniature marshmallows, salads (conventional and Midwestern American), salt flats, helicopters, birthday cakes, French press coffee, in-laws (legal and common-law), marriage, organized religion, disorganized religion, Edmund Spenser, E.T., alligators (imagined), water treatment plants, dictation software, nostalgia (loc. 4)

I'd like to add a few things to the mix:

- Men named Thad
- Casual sexual harassment from men named Thad
- Use of the term "love-swamp"
- Use of the word "moist"
- Incorrect use of the word "querulous"
- Overly inclusive content warnings
- Dinosaur semen

...for a start.

This is easily one of the most conventional romances that Faust has published, as it's basically a tongue-firmly-in-cheek second-chance romance with the minor twist that the hero is a twelve-foot utahraptor. The details are playful—Holly knows Rocky because he was part of a Utahraptor Inclusion pilot program at her high school, which was chosen "mostly because its ceilings were sixteen feet high, which made it more accessible for the dinos" (loc. 169). Meanwhile, Rocky's "convertible" is a VW bus with the top taken off (loc. 284)... It is also way, way more tame than, e.g., Wet Hot Allosaurus Summer, despite the dinosaur semen; while there's probably a thing or two that should land Holly in the ER, she does keep all of her limbs, so there's that. (I read a couple of passages out to my s.o., then asked him to Google something for me. He gave me a pained, suspicious look and refused. "It's nothing weird!" I said. "Will you please Google 'Were dinosaurs monogamous'?" After that I got him to Google whether or not utahraptors were monogamous, so it's safe to say that I've used up my let-me-Google-that-for-you goodwill for the month.)

Anyway. The whole thing is ridiculous, I have absolutely lost the plot in terms of how to come up with a coherent rating, and I am entertained.

Still feeling just fine about never having met a dinosaur in real life, though. Ditto for men named Thad.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.