A Jingle Bell Mingle (Christmas Notch #3) by Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy

This book is for the last main prompt in the #Romanceopoly2025 challenge. I was actually supposed to read this in January but I’m a big mood reader and I just wasn’t feeling it. I enjoyed this but it was definitely a little heavier than the previous books. I think I always knew it would be given the insights we got into Isaac in the previous book. He really was the saddest boy!

What I wasn’t expecting is the grief that Sunny had lived through and was still experiencing. I mean she was emotionally constipated when it came to opening about a lot of things but her insight into grief and how Isaac is handling his grief was kind of amazing.

I loved that she wasn’t pushing him to just get over it and move on like so many people in his life. He was absolutely stuck and you didn’t need a psychologist to tell you that he was stuck in his grief because he was terrified of experiencing the kind of pain he had been living with since his wife died. Sunny gives him the space to feel those feelings, until he gets in his own way that is, and then he behaved like an absolute dick and the cavalry (his friends) arrived and had a conversation that I honestly don’t think he was ready to have before.

It taking so long for Isaac to understand his feelings was honestly frustrating. I mean they were both very frustrating for far too long to be honest, but once Sunny sets her mind on something she just goes for it so once she figures out her feelings she is so open and honest. Isaac just shit all over that though, more than once, and it made me sad but it mostly made me really mad at him. By spending so much time with Sunny he discovers she is actually very vulnerable and not all sweetness and light, and then he crushes her in a very deliberate way.

So this book was much more emotional than I thought it would be but it was also what all the previous books in this series are, SPICY AF!

Oh boy, when these two came together in a physical way sparks absolutely flew. I do enjoy my smut and I enjoyed this but I was kind of going from trying to understand their grief right into a very graphic love scene. I mean life is life and you don’t stop craving physical intimacy just because you are grieving, I totally get that, it was just a little disconcerting sometimes. There was a lot ups and downs but Isaac and Sunny got there in the end.

Teddy and Steph also got there in the end, and I actually loved that the prologue and the epilogue were both from Teddy’s POV, and their little secondary plot was super cute.

A Merry Little Meet Cute, book 1, is definitely my favourite from this series so far. I’ll probably pick up the next one if there is one, as they are fun, but I don’t think the magic of book 1 will ever be beat!

Synopsis:

What happens when there’s no room at the inn and you and your potentially demonic cat become roommates with your grumpy one-night stand?

Part-time adult film actress/one-time adult film director/makeup artist Sunny Palmer has accidentally sold her very first screenplay to the Hope Channel. That was six months ago. Fast forward to a looming deadline, an uninspired Sunny has returned to the source of her inspiration in Christmas Notch, Vermont, to immerse herself in the local Christmas miracle on which her fever dream of a movie pitch was based.

Isaac Kelly, former boy band heartthrob and the saddest boy in the music biz, is the latest owner of the town’s historic mansion. After his years of heartbreak following his young wife’s death, Isaac’s record label is done waiting for new music. What better place to attempt his first holiday album than a snow-covered mansion where he can become a hermit in peace?

But after their best friends’ wedding leads to them waking up together in a freezing motel room with questionable wiring and a broken shower, Isaac takes a chance and asks Sunny to stay with him at his home. Surely the place is big enough that he’ll hardly see her or her unhinged cat. But when the two discover they’re both creatively blocked, they make a handshake deal: Isaac will help Sunny hunt down the truth behind the local lore, and Sunny will find Isaac a new muse.

And with these two opposites under one roof, there’s no way this jingle bell mingle could go off script…right?