Merry Ever After – Vi Keeland, et al.

Genre: Romance
Publisher: Self-Published
Pages: 290
Release Date: November 2021

FIVE BRAND NEW HOLIDAY STORIES

Hot Item by Vi Keeland & Penelope Ward

Getting into a fight with a sexy stranger over the last hot toy on the shelf was not the way I intended to spend Christmas Eve. And I certainly didn’t plan on spending hours more trying to win a contest to decide who would get to buy it. But when our time is up, would the toy be the only hot item I wanted to take home? 

One Night Only by Lucy Score

After a Christmas Eve concert mishap, divorced Brooke finds herself snowed in with the silver fox retiring rocker she’s been trying to interview. Will it take a Christmas miracle to get him to open up to her or does the tattooed bad boy of punk rock have other ideas on how to pass the time? 

A Kellan Holiday by Tijan

Humans are so simple with their holiday traditions. 

They are ignorant of the powerful and majestic creatures among them, like me. 

I am the most powerful demon above the surface. 

Nothing can stop me…except, well, some stupid prophecy. 

Holiday Swing by Kennedy Ryan 

For our five-year wedding anniversary, my husband decides he wants another woman.

The traditional gift is wood, but okay.

After trying everything with little improvement, our marriage counselor suggests we experiment to reignite our sex life. A swing party is my husband’s adventure of choice. 

Once inside, I can’t go through with it. Seeing him walk off with someone else, I realize we want very different things. Our marriage is over, and I have no intention of having a random hook up with a stranger.

But then away from the noise and revelry, I find him.

It’s one illicit encounter. A night with no names and no inhibitions.

I don’t hold back, knowing I’ll never see him again. 

And I don’t…until my parents’ Christmas party… 

Nochebuena by Marie Force

Nochebuena is the Cuban community’s Christmas Eve celebration, and in this short story, the cast of Marie Force’s Miami Nights Series comes together to mark the holiday after a year of change that’s touched nearly every member of the family. Catch up with the characters from How Much I Feel, How Much I Care and How Much I Love and get a sneak peek at the couple that will headline book 4, How Much I Want. If you haven’t read the books yet, you’ll still enjoy this short story set in the Miami Nights world!

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Hot Item by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward – 3 stars
Hot Item is corny, but cute nonetheless. It was a lot shorter than I expected it would be, but the hint of Christmas magic tied it all together.

One Night Only by Lucy Score – 3 stars
One Night Only suffered from lack of space to let the story breathe. It’s stories like One Night Only that make me dislike short stories so much. There’s a really interesting story here, however there aren’t enough pages to develop the story properly. One Night Only would have been improved vastly by the inclusion of a few chapters setting up Brooke and Vonn’s eventual coupling.

A Kellan Holiday by Tijan – DNF
I’m not a huge fan of Tijan’s writing to begin with, but I decided to give it a chance anyway. I managed to read 2 pages before putting it down. Apparently this couple has a full length novel.

Holiday Swing by Kennedy Ryan – 5 stars
Holiday Swing is easily the best short story of the anthology. It’s about a fire hot encounter between the main character and a stranger that will ultimate change everything.

Nochebuena by Marie Force – DNF
This story is part of another series. I read the first few chapters, but felt lost most of time so I put it down.

Merry Ever After as a whole was slightly disappointing, but mostly because of the inclusion of two stories based in already existing series. The best story of the anthology, by far, was Holiday Swing by Kennedy Ryan followed by One Night Only by Lucy Score then Hot Item by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward.

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Have you read Merry Ever After? What did you think?