Let's Start the New Year Right

even though the horrors persist...

hello lover,

I had planned this missive to you for a while and then this morning happened and I can’t just write this without addressing the newest imperialist violence the world is being subjected to. If you happen to be reading this from Venezuela or have family or friends there, I am so sorry and I am thinking of you and holding safety and peace for you in my heart. I understand that Venezuela’s President Nicolàs Marudo is a dictator, while at the same time knowing that the United States government does not have the right to also dictate who the leaders of other nations are, and put those leaders of other nations on trial inside the United States. As a Canadian, and acknowledging that my situation is vastly different, I am feeling scared about what is going to happen next, especially living in the capital.

There’s no good way to transition without sounding flippant, I think? But I hope you’ll keep reading.

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As you probably know by now, my life has been consumed by Heated Rivalry since the first episode dropped back in November. It was actually difficult for me to do promo for This Time, Next Year, the spicy holiday novella I released in December, because I was having such a hard time switching gears mentally.

But readers came through. This Time, Next Year has been so well received and has enjoyed my strongest indie launch to date! Thank you to everyone who has read, shared, and screamed about Nora and Finn. I appreciate you so much.

I don’t want this newsletter to be only about Heated Rivalry (well, I do but I know it can’t be), though. So I’ve compiled a list of some other media that I’ve been consuming lately and have dearly enjoyed.

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1. HBO’s I Love LA: if you’re also a Heated Rivalry fan, you may have seen the shots that I Love LA star, Jordan Firstman, fired at the show and its leads Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie (I’m not going to rehash the comments made and I’m certain you can google them if you need to). You may have also seen HudCon’s co-star François Arnaud’s response (that was King behaviour; that was our bi hockey daddy earning and deserving his billing). You have have seen Hudson Williams himself share both Firstman’s comments and Arnaud’s response, telling everyone to watch I Love LA, regardless. The thing is, I’d already planned to watch I Love LA because I love Josh Hutcherson and, ironically, have been a fan of Firstman’s work in the past! So I did watch it (not because Hudson told us to! I can make my own decisions tyvm)! I Love LA is absolutely hilarious, irreverent, self-deprecating, and honestly, sweet. Alani, played by True Whitaker, is probably my favourite character, she stole every scene she was in. And honestly, I really loved Jordan Firstman’s performance. Josh was perfect, of course. If you’re looking for something vastly different from Heated Rivalry, but still funny, with a bit of chaos mixed in, and a lot of online personalities (I swear half the supporting/guest cast were TikTok influencers?), I’d highly recommend I Love LA.

   🫚🥤3.5 ginger ales out of 5

2. Crave’s The Office Movers: god, I love CanCon. If you’re not Canadian, I don’t know how you can watch it but like, move here, I guess? The Office Movers features one of my favourite sounds on earth: the Toronto accent, specifically Bramptonian. The Office Movers is about two brothers who run an, you guessed it, office moving company, and their one goal is to sell the company so they can stop moving offices. What ensues is so fucking hilarious, so Canadian, Torontonian, GTA-ian (that’s Greater Toronto Area for the uninitiated), that you might think if you’re not from there you just won’t get it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Where I Love LA is glossy and rich, The Office Movers is all hustle, heart, and in my opinion, far more relatable. Let me put it this way (and with all due respect to I Love LA), if I had to choose between picking a romance MC from any of the characters in I Love LA and The Office Movers, I’d pick The Office Movers every time. These characters are people I feel like I know, and I don’t think you have to have grown up in the GTA for most people to know them, either.

   🇨🇦🐺🦆4.5 stupid Canadian wolf birds out of 5

3. Fan Service by Rosie Danan: I honestly wasn’t sure if I should include this. At this point, I feel like everyone knows who Rosie is to me, not just as an author but as a person. In case you don’t though, and in the name of full disclosure, here’s what you should know about Rosie before you read this review: I love Rosie with all of my heart, more than my heart. If I didn’t have a family I would move in with Rosie. That is not hyperbole. I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. I talk to her every day. She knows the worst things about me and loves me still. Rosie is another piece of my soul. But none of what I think and feel for Rosie takes away from these other facts I am about to list for you about Rosie: Rosie is a generational talent. When Romance historians look back on the literature produced during this era, they will pinpoint Rosie as one of the best, on the vanguard, always moving our genre forward, challenging all of us to be our best. And with that, Fan Service is the best book I read this year. Here’s the blurb:

   The only place small-town outcast Alex Lawson fits in is the online fan forum she built for The Arcane Files, a long-running werewolf detective show. Her dedication to archiving fictional supernatural lore made her Internet-famous, even if she harbors a secret disdain for the show’s star, Devin Ashwood. (Never meet your heroes—sometimes they turn out to be The Worst.)
   
   Ever since his show went off the air, Devin and his career have spiraled, but waking up naked in the woods outside his LA home with no memory of the night before is a new low. It must have been a coincidence that the once-in-a-century Wolf Blood Moon crested last night. The claws, fangs, and howling are a little more difficult to explain away. Desperate for answers, Devin finds Alex—the closest thing to an expert that exists. If only he could convince her to stop hating his guts long enough to help....
   
   Once he makes her an offer she can’t refuse, these reluctant allies lower their guards trying to wrangle his inner beast. Unfortunately, getting up close and personal quickly comes back to bite them.

   Again, because we are friends, I always feel like I need to preface my reviews with information like, “I saw all the work that went into this book,” as if that somehow takes away from how the book makes me feel, what it means. But I didn’t have to see all the work she did to recognize what Rosie did with this book. Not only did she write two characters who have the ability to be unlikable and yet so very loveable. Not only did she write a book that made me laugh out loud. She built an ENTIRE fictional TV series PLUS the online forum to go with it. She made me wish these characters were real, but also the TV show I never got to watch was real, too. Fan Service is a masterpiece and I hope, if you haven’t read it yet, you put it to the top of your TBR.

   💋5 gimme kisses out of 5

4. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams: I have been listening to this book very slowly on audio (the speed has nothing to do with my enjoyment of the book, I just, for Reasons, need to be in a specific headspace when I’m listening to fiction audiobooks, especially romance fiction audiobooks). That being said, Tia Williams writes humour and intimacy and especially YEARNING in a way that should probably be studied (I’m looking at you Romance historians). There’s a line in Seven Days in June that absolutely took my breath away, that made me stop in the middle of the sidewalk in minus 13 degree Celsius, to rip off my gloves and pull out my phone and quickly type out the quote so I wouldn’t forget it. Here, MMC Shane (no relation to Hollander) tells Eva what she means to him: I wanted to drown myself in your fucking bathwater. Yes, I’ll give you a few moments. Lines like these are what Romance is made of. The truest yearn a (gender neutral) girlie could hope for.

   🐟🥪 5 tuna melts out of 5 and I haven’t even finished yet

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This is already WAY too long! But if you’re still here, please stick with me just a bit longer for a bit of shameless promo. I’ve already mentioned my newest book release to you but did you know I’ve also:

1. Started a podcast with my bestie Ada. You can listen to the first 4 episodes of Loon Call now. In true chaos fashion, we had originally planned to release the first episode, recapping episode 1 of the series AFTER the last episode of the show was released, but then we watched episode 4 and texted each other in the middle of the night and decided to start the podcast halfway through the TV show because we just couldn’t stay quiet about it anymore. So episodes 1-3 of Loon Call recap episodes 4-6 of Heated Rivalry, and episode 4 of Loon Call recaps episodes 1&2 of the show. Our next episode (that’s 5 if you’re not keeping track) is gonna be for all you Skippers out there! Listen to Loon Call.

2. Made a playlist of songs used by Heated Rivalry editors. I do not have a talent for edits myself, but the editors in our fandom are, without a doubt, the very best. Every time I find an edit I love (usually multiple times a day) I add the song to the playlist. As of writing this newsletter, the playlist is almost 4 hours long. Listen to the Heated Rivalry Edit.

And as always, if you’ve read This Time, Next Year, please consider leaving a review or recommending it to a friend! This book has become so popular almost exclusively on word of mouth! Thank you so much!

And if you’re still reading this, thank you. More than anything in the world, I hope 2026 is a year of hope and love, a year for miracles, and peace.

xo

Rubes

*play me out Hollanov: