My True Love Gave To Me
Edited by Stephanie Perkins
Published by Macmillan
IT’S the season of sitting down with leftover chocolates and a hot drink to watch romantic Christmas movies.
My True Love Gave To Me is an anthology of 12 short and sweet holiday-themed romances, which vary from as fantastical as a trip to the North Pole to the quiet intimacy of friends and parties when you most need them.
Young adult fiction readers will likely recognise some of the masterful romance writers featured, such as Jenny Han and David Levithan, whose series To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before and Dash & Lily respectively have both famously become beloved Netflix adaptations.
However simple or full of twists, each of these stories of love through winter is worth a read.
One of the quieter love stories – made all the more charming by the ability to picture it happening to oneself – is Midnights by the bestselling author of Fangirl and the Carry On series, Rainbow Rowell.
In it, Mags and Noel are best friends who met at a mutual friend’s New Year’s party and have been inseparable ever since. The reader is given snapshots into their lives at each of these annual parties as they develop feelings for each other.
The story revolves not only around the tradition of a kiss as the clock strikes midnight and the possibility of one year finding each other in that moment, but equally of the change represented by the time of year.
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As we watch Mags and Noel grow up in brief snippets, it’s more than enough to sympathise with the great emotional, academic and romantic changes teenagers go through as they approach college or university.
It’s this theme, so welcome and affirming when represented with empathy and positivity for the future in YA fiction, that may make it one of my favourites of the 12 stories, though this is a tough call and each reader will find something perfect for them within.
Elsewhere, Han’s contribution follows a young girl who has grown up in the North Pole after being adopted by Santa. As the only human teenager in a community of elves, Natalie has been teased endlessly, and clings on to the hope of experiencing an unforgettable love, unburdened by the feeling of being the odd one out.
As she’s torn between the memory of a human boy she met while helping with deliveries one Christmas Eve and the handsome elf she feels may never see her, wishes seem a distant hope.
In the representation of this character – as Natalie is from Korea, and aware of this element of her identity – the allegories of racism and exclusion of difference are handled carefully, with magical touches of wit and sincerity.
Among the joy and festive spirit, there are emotional reflections such as difficulties with family and insecurity as gently highlighted by Levithan’s understatedly affecting contribution, which really give this collection its heart.
In both the flow of these choices and her own addition, Stephanie Perkins has created a perfectly comforting holiday book that feels just like a romantic comedy.
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