Book Review: Under the Mistletoe Collection

Continuing on with my holiday reads, I read the novellas in Amazon’s Under the Mistletoe collection and I definitely liked some stories more than others! Keep reading to find out more.

These novellas were all super quick reads so I’ll just give a short description for each book and my general thoughts on each!

• Cruel Winter With You by Ali Hazelwood – In this novella, Jamie is a young doctor home visiting her dad for the holidays. When he sends her out in the cold, snowy weather to her best friend’s house to get a pan she is forced to see her best friend’s brother, Marc. He has had a crush on her since they were kids and when they recently almost got together, things did not go well. Now, Jamie is snowed in with him and they’ll have to talk about everything. This was my favorite in the collection. I loved the storyline and the history between the two of them.
• Merry Ever After by Tessa Bailey – In this novella, Evie is a single other working at a thrift store and sewing products to sell. Luke is a farmer in the small town that Evie has moved to, who has had trouble finding clothes for his tall and built frame. Evie surprises him with custom clothes and the two begin to spend more time together. So, I like the general idea of this novella and I liked the characters but there’s something about the execution of the story or something because I found it to be a bit cringey. This was unfortunate to me because I’m a Tessa Bailey fan so I was hoping to love this one.
• All By My Elf by Olivia Dade – Nina and William are adjunct professors at the same university. For extra money during the holidays they are working in a weenie mobile, driving around and selling food. They both have secret crushes on each other. The idea of this novella is cute, but it just didn’t grab me. I actually really enjoyed their conversation about how poorly treated adjunct professors are and their struggles in the world of academia – I think this could be a regular length novel covering this topic set in a romance – but it just didn’t work well here in my opinion.
• Merriment and Mayhem by Alexandria Bellefleur – This novella follows Everleigh and Griffin. Everleigh is trying to fix up her late grandmother’s house to sell, but she keeps having accidents there and each time she is rescued by Griffin, a firefighter. I really liked this one and it saved me from giving up on the collection since I wasn’t a big fan of the previous two novellas. This one made me want more of Everleigh and Griffin.
• Only Santas in the Building by Alexis Daria – This one follows Evie and Theo. They live in the same apartment building and have both had secret crushes on each other. Things finally come to a head at a neighbor’s Santa themed Christmas party. I really liked this one too, which was nice to end the collection on a high note! I loved both Evie and Theo and loved their chemistry.

So as you can see some of the books in this collection were great and I really enjoyed them. And then there were a couple that I did not care for. Anyway, I generally enjoy these collections because they introduce me to authors I haven’t read before and may want to check out.

Have you read any of this collection?

*This post contains affiliate links.*