what I’m reading: a merry little meet cute by julie murphy and sierra simone.

The cast and crew of Hope Channel’s newest Christmas movie, Duke the Halls, have descended on Christmas Notch, VT to start filming. Former boy band member Nolan Shaw hopes this movie can restart his career and prove to everyone that he is not the bad boy the tabloids have portrayed him as. When his costar Bee Hobbes arrives Nolan instantly recognizes her as Bianca von Honey, adult film star extraordinaire. Bee is forced to keep her alter ego under wraps, less the family-friendly Hope Channel finds out about her day job. Similarly, Nolan has promised his manager he will stay squeaky clean on set but finds it increasingly difficult to do the more time he spends around Bee.

It’s my first holiday read of the season and I couldn’t wait to dive in. Unfortunately, this book was a bit of a miss for me.

What I loved:
I loved the idea of a story about making a Christmas movie. I would definitely watch the Duke the Halls movie. I also really liked Bee. She seemed like a real person and down to earth and I enjoyed reading about her. Her representation was great and I loved all the body positivity.

What I didn’t love:
First of all, there is no meet cute in this book. I’m not sure why this book is called A Merry Little Meet Cute because the main characters meet when Nolan walks up to Bee when she is standing on the sidewalk. So if you are looking for a meet cute, it’s not in this book.

I’m not sure if it was the writing or the tone but the book felt very YA to me. I had a hard time remembering that these characters are supposed to be in their late 20s/early 30s. And then it was a bit jarring during the steamy scenes because I almost felt like I was reading about teenagers fantasizing about each other and having sex. Scenes would go from funny to raunchy super fast and something about them didn’t work for me. I’m wondering, because this book is written by two authors, if the writing in the book is split up and Julie Murphy wrote the main plot and Sierra Simone wrote the steamy scenes and that is why they are not gelling together.

I also felt like Bee and Nolan’s connection was a bit lacking. I think it was because Bee had a crush on Nolan when she was younger and Nolan is an avid consumer of Bee’s ClosedDoor account that the characters thought since they both had crushes on one another, they should get together. I got the impression that they were more into the fantasy of who each person was than the actual person. This is really shown in the way that Nolan kept focusing on Bee’s adult film career. There was a lot of inner monologue about how he couldn’t believe he was waking up with a porn star or touching a porn star and I was not a fan of his line of thinking.

For two people trying to keep their secrets, Bee and Nolan were not secretive at all. Here’s hoping the next book on my list is better than this one.

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