Review: A Holly Jolly Ever After

A Holly Jolly Ever After by Julie Murphy
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

“My entire life, everyone else has defined Winnie Baker for me, but now, I want to define Winnie Baker for myself. I want to be a new Winnie.” 

Winnie grew-up as a child actress, groomed to be a Christian and Inspirational content darling. She also has narcolepsy, so when a photograph got out when she was a teenager of her passed out in a car, looking drunk, the team around her and her parents, rush her into marriage at eighteen with her boyfriend at the time. Now, years later, discovering her husband was having an affair, she's divorced but lost a movie deal with the Hope Channel. Needing money to pay them back, she signs onto a movie for the Hope After Dark part of their programming. The lead playing the dirty Santa Claus is none other than the guy who took the picture of her that started all the rumors. 

Kallum always had a crush on Winnie but as a member of a popular boy band, his reputation didn't fit in with her “good girl”. Now the owner of a budding pizza restaurant business, he's had a sex tape leaked and he was kind of forced to license it to get the money that was getting made from it. He knows his parents were embarrassed and his reputation for being a good time guy, he's ready to make some changes in his life. He can't believe his luck when he signs onto a movie and he may just get his chance with Winnie. 

“Will you help me?” I blurted. 

Second in the Christmas Notch series, you could just into the series here, like I did. Not knowing the exact tone of the series did have me a little shocked at how steamy the open door scenes were. The cover kind of gives off a sweet holiday story vibe, but I'm here to tell you that pinkies are going in b-holes in the first one-hundred pages or so. The whole concept is that Winnie was sexually repressed and is working through the indoctrinated shame she has grown up with, so when it becomes clear that she doesn't know how to fake an orgasm during one of the scenes she's filming for the movie, she eventually goes to Kallum to help her with “research”. If you're looking for more physical interaction between your leads than emotional, this would be for you. Since they kind of knew, at least of each other before, it's pretty much insta-lust and attraction. 

“Research,” he said. He made the word sound utterly filthy, and my stomach flipped right over at the sound of it. 

There's a little bit of holiday atmosphere, the film is being shot in a Hope Channel created Christmas town but there wasn't much to the movie aspect, a few shown, quick times of them filming (I found it strange it wasn't talked about at all that Kallum had no acting experience??). By the midway point they've slept together and while Winnie thinks Kallum is just his want no responsibilities persona, he's thinking he's in love with Winnie. At their end of filming, Kallum has an emergency he has to leave suddenly for and Winnie overhears a conversation that makes her think Kallum wasn't as into their relationship as she was. The story goes into Part 2 six weeks later where a bomb gets dropped on Winnie and she's fighting to keep her ex out of her life and her parents still trying to control her, while Kallum is fighting to show Winnie that he's a changed man and wants to be serious with her. 

There wasn't much of emotional depth here for me, therefore the numerous hot and heavy scenes had me skimming because they just felt explicit for explicit sakes, which could be someone's jam but didn't work for me. The latter second half also brought in a lot of characters, friends and family, the couple from book one, and obvious future main character bait. If you're looking for more hot and heavy and not sweet emotional in a holiday read, then this had more of those scenes than you can shake a candy cane at.

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