Book Review: A Holly Jolly Ever After

Last Christmas I read and loved A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone. Then this holiday season I added the novella Snow Place Like LA and the second novel in the Christmas Notch series, A Holly Jolly Ever After to my Christmas tbr. I read A Holly Jolly Ever After this week and really enjoyed it – possibly more than A Merry Little Meet Cute!

A Holly Jolly Ever After follows Kallum and Winnie. Kallum is best friends with Nolan from book 1 and they used to be part of a famous boy band together when they were younger. Now Kallum owns a successful pizza chain and has come back into the spotlight after his sex tape got released. Winnie was a child actress who found success into adulthood basically as America’s sweetheart. She married at 18 and did wholesome movies. However, after some bad press and a divorce her career is not as hot as it used to be.

The Hope Channel (the wholesome, Hallmark-esque channel that Nolan and Bee filmed their movie for in book 1) realized how successful their movie was with Nolan and Bee even after people realized it was produced by a porn king and Bee is a porn star. So they’ve decided to launch Hope After Dark and their new Christmas movie will be tv-ma starring none other than Kallum and Winnie. Winnie is ready for something new and to shed her good girl image. The only problem is although she was married she still doesn’t have a lot of sexual experience and it always seemed like a chore with her ex-husband as she was raised in a very conservative, religious household. Winnie’s lack of experience makes it hard to act out the sex scenes so she confides in Kallum and he, of course, is willing to tutor her.

This book was just as funny, entertaining, heartwarming, and spicy as the first book. There was one thing I wasn’t a fan of, but I don’t want to say without spoiling the story, but if you want to know what it was you can check out my GoodReads review because I have it marked as having a spoiler.

I loved Winnie and Kallum! I loved how real Winnie was and how open she was to embracing something new and recognizing her desires. Kallum was pretty real too with him being proud of his “dad bod” haha.

Read this if you want a spicy Christmas romance with the friends with benefits to lovers trope.

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