Well, you certainly get your bang for the buck worth with this one! All together, it's looong (450 pages), even if the stories are short or novellas.


COWBOY JACKPOT: CHRISTMAS - Randi Alexander
Cowboy up. College student/buckle bunny meets rodeo star in Vegas; together they hit the jackpot. Much smexy fun here, although I am REALLY not a fan of insta-love, even if (hero insists) THIS time it's different. Also, there are SO many sex scenes that it seems to avoid repetitiveness, some phrasing is a little awkward - when it says "her insides shifted," for example, I don't think hot, I am hoping she doesn't have an embarrassing accident.

A NAUGHTY NOELLE - Ann Bruce
Cop undercover, in all sense of the word. Set in NY; he saves her from a mugging/rape; later she saves him from an ambush and hides him in a luxury hotel. Short story, includes anal scene without much prep either for the reader or the heroine.

HOLIDAY SURPRISE: UNWRAPPED - Aliyah Burke
Interracial love in cold snowy Boston; she's supposed to be housesitting; he's crashing at her cousin's pad. This girl is REALLY bitchy the first couple of pages, making it hard to want to read on.


CHRISTMAS ANGEL - Opal (Amber) Carew
Magical realism. The Berringers are cursed to find love, only to lose it, and the heirloom angel on the top of the tree is human, but trapped in that for for the last two hundred years. If she can seduce the last Berringer into loving her in 36 hours (or so), she can stay human - but what if SHE falls in love, too? This was emotionally sweet and full of conflict, as well as steamy.

A HIGHLANDER FOR THE HOLIDAYS - Dawn Halliday (Jennifer Haymore)
A sweet Scotland historical kilted up nicely. Two teen friends/sweethearts have been separated for years; her married to a wifebeating jerk, and him sent to serve her brother on other lands. Now they've been brought together again, and can steal a few sweet moments in bed, before she is married off again, to a brute even worse than the first. This is a novella and possibly the longest in this collection, but I savored every minute of it. The conflict feels real, not contrived; loved the references to Hogmanay and the Yule log, and the characters' agony and helplessness felt very real, making the HEA that much tastier.

ILLICIT CHRISTMAS - Yvette Hines
All I Wanna Do Is Run Over, oops, Make Love To You. Interracial After bumping into a strange (but hot-looking) pedestrian, the heroine, who's just moving into this small town, invites him to her hotel room for a ONS. Turns out she's just accepted a position teaching at the same school where HE teaches, too, and he's determined not to let one night be all there is.

HER XMAS PRESENT - Christin Lovell
Plus-sized heroine. Two best friends take it to the next level. Big girls deserve love too, and there are really hot guys who prefer them, in fact, the heroine was SO negative on herself most of the way through it got annoying. And it was a little unbelievable that they would BOTH have secret feelings for each other, and know each other so well, yet NO hint of those feelings ever slipped out?

ALL SHE WANTS FOR CHRISTMAS - Paige Tyler
It's a spanking good time, if you're into a spanking good time. At the holiday Xmas party, the girlfriends share their spanking stories - they've ALL got one, and they all liked it, except for the hostess who's afraid to tell her hubs that THIS is what she wants for Christmas. I know this is fantasy, but IRL, no, not ALL women in a group of 6-7 will have tried AND loved spanking.

I enjoyed this as a collection, and an opportunity to "meet" several authors I hadn't sampled before, but in all honesty, I kept putting the book down and MAKING myself go back to it. It's good, really good in some places, but not great, and several of the stories just didn't hit the spot for me. ( )