Under the Mistletoe Collection

The Under the Mistletoe Collection is comprised of 5 original short stories presented through the Amazon Original Stories program. Stories from any of the collections are available to read or listen for free with Amazon Prime.

Title: Cruel Winter with You

Author: Ali Hazelwood

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories 2024

Genre: Romance Short Story

Pages: 73

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Holiday Reads

Where I Got It: Amazon Prime

Spice Rating: 5

All newly minted pediatrician Jamie Malek wants is to borrow a roasting pan for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, that requires her to interact with Marc—her best friend’s troublemaking brother, who’s now a tech billionaire. He’s the one who got away. She’s the one who broke his heart. Outside, a howling blizzard. Inside, a crackling fire. Suddenly, being snowbound with the man she never expected to see again might not be such a bad way to spend a winter’s night.:

I really do enjoy enemies to lovers style romance stories. This one was short and sweet, but lots of good banter. I have mostly really loved Ali Hazelwood’s publications.

Title: Merry Ever After

Author: Tessa Bailey

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories 2024

Genre: Romance Short Story

Pages: 59

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Holiday Reads

Where I Got It: Amazon Prime

Spice Rating: 5

Evie Crowe is starting over in a strange town with her newborn, and men are the furthest thing from her mind. If only the quiet, hulking farmer, Luke Ward, would stop coming into the thrift shop and piquing her reluctant interest. Evie wants to stay single all the way—she can’t trust anything more than friends-with-holiday-benefits. But Luke is in it for the long haul. He’s fixed on making this a Christmas Evie will remember forever. If she gives him a chance.

Tessa Bailey writes a type of aggressive alpha male characters that I’m not a huge fan of. In this one, we don’t get enough of Luke for me to root for him. Instead, the story positions Luke in a much more creepy stalker role. Not my favorite.

Title: All By My Elf

Author: Olivia Dade

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories 2024

Genre: Romance Short Stories

Pages: 59

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Holiday Reads

Where I Got It: Amazon Prime

Spice Rating: 4

Nina and William are underpaid adjunct professors at the same university, where winter break is no break at all: ’tis the season to make extra money. When their holiday side hustle has them stranded by a blinding blizzard in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing to do but cuddle up for warmth and play a hot and bothered game of Never Have I Ever to pass the time. But in the game of love, secrets never stay secret for long…

Too much silliness in this one. Riding around in a phallic shaped pastry vehicle is a little much for me. I wanted to see more actual connection between these two people instead of lots of flashbacks. It was fine.

Title: Merriment and Mayhem

Author: Alexandria Bellfleur

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories 2024

Genre: Romance Short Story

Pages: 58

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Holiday Reads

Where I Got It: Amazon Prime

Spice Rating: 5

When Everleigh Dangerfield’s baking disaster necessitates a call to 911, firefighter Griffin Brantley douses the flames in the kitchen, but the ones he stokes in Everleigh are an entirely different story. Unfortunately, Everleigh’s only visiting and doesn’t do casual hookups, no matter how smoldering the temptation. But Everleigh’s holiday mishaps have just begun. And Griffin is seemingly always on call. If Everleigh is game for a change of plans, he can give her the merriest Christmas of her life.

Okay this was absolute nonsense and I really liked it. The collection of events that led to the Everleigh and Griffin getting together was wild and fast-paced. I would definitely read more stories from Bellefleur.

Title: Only Santas in the Building

Author: Alexis Daria

Publisher: Amazon Original Stories 2024

Genre: Romance Short Story

Pages: 65

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Holiday Reads

Where I Got It: Amazon Prime

Spice Rating: 4

All Evie Cruz wants for Christmas is a nap. And maybe some ornaments for her naked Christmas tree. And while she’s making a list, she wouldn’t mind unwrapping her sexy upstairs neighbor like a present. Luckily, the building’s Santa-themed party and a surprise sprig of mistletoe give her just the opening she needs to make all her wishes come true.

Another cute story involving a secret Santa and crushes on neighbors. I was rooting for Evie to come out of her work fog, enjoy life, and possibly make a romantic connection. Such a cute story.

Next up on the TBR pile

Teach Me by Olivia Dade

Title: Teach Me (There’s Something About Marysburg #1)

Author: Olivia Dade

Publisher: Olivia Dade 2019

Genre: Romance

Pages: 261

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library Love; She Reads Romance - Nerd with Glasses

Their lesson plans didn’t include love. But that’s about to change…

When Martin Krause arrives at Rose Owens’s high school, she’s determined to remain chilly with her new colleague. Unfriendly? Maybe. Understandable? Yes, since a loathsome administrator gave Rose’s beloved world history classes to Martin, knowing it would hurt her.

But keeping her distance from a man as warm and kind as Martin will prove challenging, even for a stubborn, guarded ice queen. Especially when she begins to see him for what he truly is: a man who’s never been taught his own value. Martin could use a good teacher—and luckily, Rose is the best.

Rose has her own lessons—about trust, about vulnerability, about her past—to learn. And over the course of a single school year, the two of them will find out just how hot it can get when an ice queen melts.

Overall, I really enjoyed Dade’s other series Spoiler Alert. This book didn’t quite do it for me. I wanted to like it so much especially as it featured teachers. But… I think the book spent a lot of time discussing teaching and how Rose had to present herself on the job. Too much time. I just lost interested at multiple parts of the book. And ultimately, I wasn’t super excited for the main couple like I should have been. I would have liked more scenes of them together after their first night together. Instead, we flash through time to get to the big confrontation at the end. I just wasn’t totally into it by then. I did look at the summaries for the other two books in the series and I might just try those.

There’s Something About Marysburg

#1 Teach Me
#2 40-Love
#3 Sweetest in the Gale

Next up on the TBR pile:

Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade

Title: Ship Wrecked (Spoiler Alert #3)

Author: Olivia Dade

Publisher: Avon 2022

Genre: Romance

Pages: 404

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

Maria’s one-night-stand—the thick-thighed, sexy Viking of a man she left without a word or a note—just reappeared. Apparently, Peter’s her surly Gods of the Gates co-star, and they’re about to spend the next six years filming on a desolate Irish island together. She still wants him…but he now wants nothing to do with her.

Peter knows this role could finally transform him from a forgettable character actor into a leading man. He also knows a failed relationship with Maria could poison the set, and he won’t sabotage his career for a woman who’s already walked away from him once. Given time, maybe they can be cooperative colleagues or friends—possibly even bestfriends—but not lovers again. No matter how much he aches for her.

For years, they don’t touch off-camera. But on their last night of filming, their mutual restraint finally shatters, and all their pent-up desire explodes into renewed passion. Too bad they still don’t have a future together, since Peter’s going back to Hollywood, while Maria’s returning to her native Sweden. She thinks she needs more than he can give her, but he’s determined to change her mind, and he’s spent the last six years waiting. Watching. Wanting.

His shipwrecked Swede doesn’t stand a chance.

I have enjoyed this series, but this particular volume just didn’t quite land with me. There was something about the pacing and the character interactions bothered me throughout the entire book. I finally figured out that my big problem was that the two main characters spend most of the book not even longing, but just as work colleagues. I got a bit bored throughout the middle. There was just too much back and forth, but not the great banter that I love. Overall there just wasn’t enough fun and steam in this one to really get me too excited.

Spoiler Alert

Next up on the TBR pile:

All the Feels by Olivia Dade

Title: All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)

Author: Olivia Dade

Publisher: Avon 2020

Genre: Romance

Pages: 416

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Winter TBR

Alexander Woodroe has it all. Charm. Sex appeal. Wealth. Fame. A starring role as Cupid on TV’s biggest show, Gods of the Gates. But the showrunners have wrecked his character, he's dogged by old demons, and his post-show future remains uncertain. When all that reckless emotion explodes into a bar fight, the tabloids and public agree: his star is falling.

Enter Lauren Clegg, the former ER therapist hired to keep him in line. Compared to her previous work, watching over handsome but impulsive Alex shouldn’t be especially difficult. But the more time they spend together, the harder it gets to keep her professional remove and her heart intact, especially when she discovers the reasons behind his recklessness…not to mention his Cupid fanfiction habit.

When another scandal lands Alex in major hot water and costs Lauren her job, she’ll have to choose between protecting him and offering him what he really wants—her. But he’s determined to keep his improbably short, impossibly stubborn, and extremely endearing minder in his life any way he can. And on a road trip up the California coast together, he intends to show her exactly what a falling star will do to catch the woman he loves: anything at all.

This was a good contemporary romance, but it deals with some heavy things. I absolutely adored Alex and Lauren’s back-and-forth banter. Those scenes between the two are my favorites in this book. Their romantic relationship was a bit harder to connect with. Something about the way the romantic scenes were written just didn’t land for me. I didn‘t see enough emotional and intellectual connection between the two characters. I really wanted to see more of that and less of the sexy scenes. I think that’s the first time that I’ve ever written that sentence. The passages that really delved into body image and the treatment of people were powerful. I was thankful that Dade didn’t skim over these topics or conversations but dove into them. The book was a bit disjointed at parts that kept it from being an absolute great book.

Spoiler Alert

#1 Spoiler Alert
#2 All the Feels

Next up on the TBR pile:

Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

Title: Spoiler Alert

Author: Olivia Dade

Publisher: Avon 2020

Genre: Romance

Pages: 403

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges:

Marcus Caster-Rupp has a secret. The world may know him as Aeneas, star of the biggest show on television, but fanfiction readers call him something else: Book!AeneasWouldNever. Marcus gets out his frustrations with the show through anonymous stories about the internet’s favorite couple, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone discovered his online persona, he’d be finished in Hollywood.

April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s long hidden her fanfic and cosplay hobbies from her “real life”—but not anymore. When she dares to post her latest costume creation on Twitter, her plus-size take goes viral. And when Marcus asks her out to spite her internet critics, truth officially becomes stranger than fanfiction.

On their date, Marcus quickly realizes he wants more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. But when he discovers she’s Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to keep from her.

With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?

I had seen this one on a few lists, but hadn’t jumped at the book because of not great books I had picked up that managed to try to be body inclusive, but still managed to be fatphobic. Fortunately, a few good friends kept recommending this one and I finally picked it up. Definitely a keeper of a romantic comedy. April and Marcus are great characters and this is one realistic and adult romance. I’m so glad that we don’t fall into the whiny angst of some romances. We get two mature adults that are attempting to navigate real life. There was just enough conflict to keep the book moving and enough sexual tension and then steamy scenes to balance it all out. I really loved this one. I wanted to hug this one after closing the last page.

Next up on the TBR pile: