Red Popcorn Strings and Gumball Rings is the story of Casey and Ellis, a young couple very much in love, but also very poor. The story is told in third person through both their eyes.

This sweet Christmas story presents the idea that no matter how poor a person is, love and having someone to love you back, is enough. People can make do with the bare minimum and it’s good enough.

Casey and Ellis live in a trailer home in a town that doesn’t look kindly on gays, let alone gay couples. The men get by as best they can. Ellis works at an auto body shop. He hopes at some point, the boss will hire him for a permanent position. Casey works at the library, but only for part of the year, so he needs another job. Just scraping by, Ellis finds a discarded Christmas tree and takes it back to their trailer home. Casey is thrilled and they decorate the tree with popcorn.

The author did a great job conveying Casey and Ellis’ living conditions, the love they felt for each other and the kind of background they came from. That’s what makes this different from most of the Christmas stories I’ve read.

The one thing that bothered me about the writing was the author used a lot of monologue. I don’t enjoy reading monologue because it comes across as telling me what happens rather than getting me to experience what the characters experience. Somehow, the author was able to draw me in and feel for Casey and Ellis.

Red Popcorn Strings is a fast, sweet, Christmassy short story and has all the feels of the holiday. I recommend this book to anyone wanting to get into the holiday spirit. I give this book 4 Stars.
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One of the things I loved about this was that the MC's weren't macho rich guys with everything in the world. This dealt with a couple who is deeply in love with each other, but they don't have much. It was refreshing to see something that could be a bit more realistic and focusing on the true meaning of Christmas. I was touched by the memories of Casey's mom, and my heart went out to both guys as they dealt with family. I loved the ending. Red Popcorn Strings and Gumball Rings--really don't need more than that when you have true love. ( )

This is a short story done right!

First off, it definitely helped that Ellis and Casey were already an established couple, so we didn't have to go through the often-tedious-in-short-stories first meeting and falling in instalove. Nope, this couple is already serious in love with one another, even though they're dirt poor and struggling to eke out an existence in a rather backwards, socially speaking, area. Having come from an area such as this one, it felt completely authentic to me how the setting was portrayed - the family who doesn't want to acknowledge that a child is gay and has pretty much cut him out of their lives, the "we know you're gay but please don't talk about it" coworkers, and the hardscrabble life that often comes from living in such an area, whether you're gay or not.

But even if they had just met, I feel like the author would have done a great job at making their romance feel developed even though the story is short. There's just something about this story that spoke to my heart. It didn't feel fake or rushed at all to me, and in short stories, that is rare for me.

The only problem I really had with this story was the sex scene. Dry anal anything never sounds like a good idea to me, unless you're into serious pain, I guess. I'll give a hard pass to reading about it, too. ( )