Sunday, December 22, 2024

A Jingle Bell Mingle

               


Title: A Jingle Bell Mingle
Series: Christmas Notch #3
Author: Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone
Published: Avon, September 24, 2024
Pages: 373
Genre: Holiday Romance

Part-time adult film actress/one-time adult film director/makeup artist Sunny Palmer has accidentally sold her very first screenplay to the Hope Channel. That was six months ago. Fast forward to a looming deadline, an uninspired Sunny has returned to the source of her inspiration in Christmas Notch, Vermont, to immerse herself in the local Christmas miracle on which her fever dream of a movie pitch was based.

Isaac Kelly, former boy band heartthrob and the saddest boy in the music biz, is the latest owner of the town’s historic mansion. After his years of heartbreak following his young wife’s death, Isaac’s record label is done waiting for new music. What better place to attempt his first holiday album than a snow-covered mansion where he can become a hermit in peace?

But after their best friends’ wedding leads to them waking up together in a freezing motel room with questionable wiring and a broken shower, Isaac takes a chance and asks Sunny to stay with him at his home. Surely the place is big enough that he’ll hardly see her or her unhinged cat. But when the two discover they’re both creatively blocked, they make a handshake deal: Isaac will help Sunny hunt down the truth behind the local lore, and Sunny will find Isaac a new muse.

And with these two opposites under one roof, there’s no way this jingle bell mingle could go off script…right?


OK. I love Christmas Notch. I want to go to this wildly sex positive town where everything feels like Christmas all the time. Even the strip club is Christmas themed, and that's just so amazing. It never fails to bring me joy to think about it. 

But I've noticed a pattern with these books that I'm finding does dampen my joy a touch. I had high hopes for this third installment. And don't get me wrong, I do love the bi representation in this series! There's a lot to be said for that. But the fact that the full novels are all MF, hetero-presenting couples, and only the novellas are MM and FF is definitely a choice. They tee'd it up perfectly to be a MMF throuple. But it wasn't meant to be. 

Or it was, but we were like 50+ years too late? And WWII robbed us of what could have been? You've gotta read it for those details, but I would definitely watch that movie!

Ratings
Stars: 4/5
Spice: 4/5

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