Santa, Honey

Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm

When hotshot pro baseball player Alex Boxer gets tagged for speeding in small town Holiday, Florida, the judge sentences him to community service – as Santa Claus. Now Alex is stuck playing Santa at the local mall in a too-tight suit, working under the supervision of Holly McIntyre – who’s appropriately dressed as The Nutcracker.

Frankly, I’m not thrilled with the direction Angell’s writing style has taken lately. In this novella and her most recent single-title, the prose has become a bit choppy, with heavy reliance on one-sentence paragraphs clusters, for example:

She had the passion of a metal pole.
Awkwardness set him back.
He felt like an absolute idiot.
Holly McIntyre just wasn’t into him.

Also annoying: Alex Boxer. I didn’t like him. He’s an ass roughly 85% of the time, with occasional moments of super-niceness that seemed completely out of character. Plus, he’s so obsessed with “booty” that I just couldn’t believe in the HEA. I finished the story thinking that Alex would grow tired of Holly within a month, and would take off in search of some booty-licious twins to get jiggy with.

Grade: C-

Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm (reprint of 1996 novella)

Every year Jessica Jones suffers through a Christmas Curse, and this year is looking like the worst one so far. She’s promised to help her former foster mother out with Christmas this year, but one of the foster kids steals her wallet and her car. In order to save Christmas for the rest of the kids, Jessica decides to go on an armed robbery spree in Philadelphia dressed as Santa Claus. When her first robbery gets sticky, Jessica takes a fellow Santa Claus hostage – ex-CIA agent Luke Carter – before heading off to rob a porn shop.

To put it bluntly, Jessica and Luke are a TSTL match made in heaven. During Jessica’s blundering robbery, Luke continually mocks her – ‘cause you know, when you’re confronted with a gun-toting crazy woman, clearly the best course of action is to antagonize her into shooting at you. But the piece de resistance is when, after the botched porn shop robbery, widower Luke decides that he’s head over heels in love with Jessica – despite the fact that he knows nothing about her. So of course he begins a determined pursuit.

The setup for Naughty or Nice requires significant suspension of disbelief, and I just couldn’t do it. Additionally, Jessica is very two-dimensional and the secondary characters are all clichés. But, having said all that, I will admit that there is a good amount of fun in the story. I may have thought the characters were dumber than rocks, and the plot too wacky, but I wasn’t bored. Plus, the fact that it wasn’t just a TSTL heroine, but a matched TSTL couple, helped turn some of my annoyance into amusement.

Grade: C

Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm

Casey Harbison’s sister Emma wants to spend Christmas together at the quaint Adirondacks lodge where Emma had made reservations with her now-ex-boyfriend. Casey agrees to go, with the condition that she can get some work done at the lodge. Of course Emma doesn’t tell Casey that Dutch Lodge isn’t just quaint – it’s totally without electricity! So Casey is pretty steamed when the sisters meet brothers Jake and Matt Van Der Staappen, who’ve come to help their aunt and uncle run the annual Romance of Christmas celebration at the lodge. Jake and Emma hit it off right away, but Matt has his work cut out for him trying to get Casey’s attention. She’s pretty, though not a knock-out like her sister. But there’s just something about the angry computer programmer that’s got Matt fantasizing about snowy days spent in a warm bed.

Christmas Unplugged was unquestionably the highlight of this anthology. The setup was believable and enjoyable, the characters well developed and likeable. There’s no wackiness or stupidity; there’s just a lovely story of two people getting to know each other and falling in love. Jake and Emma’s romance is in the background, with the focus firmly on Matt and Casey – characters that felt real, imperfect, and well matched. Frankly, I didn’t want their story to end.

Grade: B

Because two of the three stories fall in the C range, I can’t recommend Santa, Honey – which is a shame because the Nash story is quite good.

-- Katie Mack

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