I barely recognize myself anymore. For years I’ve sneered at holiday romance and this year I’m devouring everything red, green, and glittered. Christmas has never been my favorite holiday, but in light of Dumpster Fire 2016 I’m grasping for anything happy and joyful –even if the holidays previously felt over commercialized and fake. I put up every holiday decoration I could find in the back corners of my basement. I racked up my MasterCard bill over-indulging in gift buying. I’m going to drink mulled wine until I sneeze and sweat in burgundy. It’s basically holiday overload or I might go out and buy a dozen golden retriever puppies. I NEED SOMETHING SOFT AND WARM AND HAPPY OKAY? I’m glad I broke with previous years’ traditions because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have read Glass Tidings and it’s such a wonderful romance. In fact, it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

One of the reasons I usually don’t read holiday romance is that sometimes authors use this nebulous idea of the “Christmas spirit” as a tool for resolving conflict: “Well, we hated each other for years, but now it’s snowing so much and I just realized I love you because Christmas.” In my mind, the holidays present more conflict than they resolve–lots of people who may or may not like each other trapped under one roof.

One reason I loved Glass Tidings is that it’s set around Christmas, but the holidays supply just as much conflict as resolution. It’s not about having the perfect family or perfect dinner—in fact, it’s about lacking those things. It’s about two really lonely people finding love and family in each other, and it was such a powerful read.

Eddie Rodrigues is a drifter. He grew up in the system and has made a tenuous living for himself as a glass artist at Renaissance Faires. He doesn’t have a permanent residence and most of his possessions fit in a duffel bag. Eddie’s rootless existence would feel terrifying for a lot of people but he’s making it work. He travels with Faires during the summer months and spends winters down south with other people who work the circuit. He keeps his expectations low so he can’t be disappointed. Eddie is the guy who insists everything is FINE when clearly it’s not.

When the book opens, his car has broken down in Illinois and he’s walking to the nearest town and bus station. It’s dark and cold, and Eddie just happens to be passing through a small town when he witnesses a hit and run. With the victim in a coma and Eddie the only witness, the police ask him to stay the night.

One of the residents, Grayson Croft, is asked to put Eddie up for the night, and neither men are super happy with the situation. Eddie is 1. not white and 2. itinerant, and he knows that those things don’t always mix well with police. Gray is a peacoat, salt-and-pepper bearded, grumpy loaner who is determined to skulk around his sadness shack. (Okay, it’s actually a really nice house, but work with me here). Both men are like WTF is going on now – this is disrupting our brooding loneliness and staring into middle space. There’s some instant attraction between them too, but given the circumstances they both quash it.

Some of that initial unease fades, and as Eddie sticks around to help the police, Gray (for reasons he doesn’t totally understand) offers to put Eddie up and to give him a seasonal job at his Christmas Shoppe. Eddie (for reasons he doesn’t totally understand) takes him up on the offer even though his instincts tell him to run. Gray gives Eddie space in the garage so Eddie can use his glass-making skills to create ornaments to sell as well.

Basically Eddie and Gray are two profoundly lonely people who have been badly disappointed by past relationships. One thing that I loved was the incredibly slow burn: they live together as roommates before opening up the doors to a romantic relationship, and they display their developing affection for each other in the thousand tiny intimacies that couples share.

In romance, characters can tend to make these big, dramatic gestures to prove their love. In reality, a lot of love and intimacy comes through small gestures – cups of tea, midnight runs to the store for tampons or Nyquil, foot rubs, that kind of thing.

By living together, Eddie and Gray create this space where they can care for each other, cook for each other, and perform small kindnesses for each other, all while pretending it’s not about love (because grumpy, sad, broken feelings, y’all). They share a love for sci-fi novels (specifically crazy sci-fi from the 70’s) and after they close down the shop, they come home and read on the couch together. There’s a scene where Eddie makes the choice to share Gray’s blanket and to slip his foot under Gray’s thigh – it’s such a small, innocent thing and yet it speaks more loudly about what he’s thinking than a lot of full-on sex scenes.

Both Gray and Eddie are petrified of making the first move. There’s an element of exploitation both are afraid of, too: Gray because he’s Eddie’s boss and doesn’t want to be that guy and Eddie because he feels indebted to Gray financially and doesn’t want to it to seem like he’s making up for that debt via sex. So they awkward around each other a lot. And I loved it. At one point Gray agonizes over whether buying Eddie a new hardcover sci-fi novel is too much. It made my chest hurt a little.

A lot of this book made me have significant feels:

…Although he’d be hitting the road with bank in his pocket, along with his new taste for fine wine. Gray had told him the bottle they were drinking tonight was particularly special, broken out to celebrate Gray’s first purchase of what he was calling “unique glass artworks commissioned specifically for The Christmas Shoppe.”

The words were fancy and stupid and shouldn’t have made Eddie’s stomach get all fluttery and his cheeks flush hot. He could turn out a dozen fairies or dragons or roses an hour and they weren’t remotely unique. All he did was change up the colors, tweak the shapes, pulling them thinner or letting the glass thicken up–superficial changes that didn’t change the figurines’ essence. They were junk, not art, just like their maker.

The ornaments Eddie had removed from Gray’s closet and hung from nearly invisible fishing line in sets of three in each window of the house’s ground floor, varying the lengths because matchy-matchy was boring, were art. He’d felt halfway a thief just unwrapping them from the soft folds of old tissue paper and laying them out on the coffee table in the living room.

Only a child would be fooled into thinking Eddie’s trinkets were unique. A child or Gray, who was almost insistently childlike when it came to his determination to make more of Eddie than was actually there.

Eddie was starting to feel like he was selling Gray something, and he wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but Gray was definitely buying. Even if he was still giving Eddie the stink eye every time one of the ornament sets hung in the house caught his eye, Eddie could tell he secretly liked seeing them. He’d spent too long wandering from window to window when he’d finally arrived home from work, fingertips brushing each ornament like it carried a specific memory that matched one in Gray’s heart. Watching him, Eddie reminded himself to start experimenting tomorrow with the glass ball ornaments he’d ordered. He wasn’t sure he had the right glass to coat the inside of the clear globes with swirling, melting colors, but experimenting would be fun, and he’d figure it out. Ideas about a gift he wanted to make for Gray for Christmas had started bubbling up in him as soon as he’d gotten his hands on his torch again. So let Gray frown all he wanted.

Meanwhile Eddie’s stomach was twisting like he’d broken his own personal code. Because if Gray really understood him, he wouldn’t be treating Eddie like this.

Like he was something special.

SO. MANY. FEELINGS.

A big part of the conflict in this book is that Gray and Eddie are both outsiders. Gray because he’s the only gay man in a small town; Eddie because he’s never belonged anywhere or had any family. And both men have built lives around being outsiders, specifically erected walls that protect them from the pain and disappointment of their pasts. So the idea of settling in and finding a sense of home and love together is profoundly scary to both of them.

Both Eddie and Gray have to grow substantially to find HEA and both do, which makes Glass Tidings so satisfying to read. In fact I think this is one of the most emotionally rich, immersive books I’ve read all year. It’s full of really intense feelings, it’s deeply character driven, and it’s a ton of slow-burn and tiny gestures that add up to Big Things. Honestly, I’m glad I went full-on Christmas crazy this year as my holiday-boycotting of previous years would have led me to missing this book, and that would have been a tragedy. I wish more of the romance I read was this beautifully nuanced and focused on small details. (In addition, the author is donating twenty percent of the profits from this book to The Trevor Project which is very cool.)

If you like romance that’s heavy on character and might make you cry a little about glass roses, I suggest you check out Glass Tidings.