Secret Santa

Secret Santa

Fern Michaels, Marie Bostwick, Laura Levine, Cindy Myers

Genre: Christmas Romance

Summary (from the publisher): Christmas is the time for miracles, mayhem, and holiday romance in these wonderful stories from four of today's most beloved authors…


"Mister Christmas" by Fern Michaels
A week before Christmas, attorney Claire O'Brien is summoned to Ireland to change her wealthy client's will--only to encounter resistance from his handsome nephew. Will Claire be forced to spend the holidays up close and personal with her irresistible Irish nemesis?


"The Yellow Rose of Christmas" by Marie Bostwick
Though Miss Velvet Tudmore wrote off romance years ago, rumor has it she has a secret admirer. And when her surprise suitor promises to reveal himself at the annual Christmas ball in Too Much, Texas, Velvet starts to wonder: is it ever too late to find love?


"Nightmare on Elf Street" by Laura Levine
Aside from the mortifying costume, how bad can a gig as a mall Santa's elf be? Jaine Austen finds out when she's teamed up with the Santa from Hell. But things go from bad to worse when he's found murdered on the job--and Jaine is a suspect. Now all she wants for Christmas is to find the real killer…


"Room at the Inn" by Cindy Myers
When a Rocky Mountain blizzard forces Barb and her husband to spend Christmas in a remote Colorado cabin with their fellow travelers, Barb struggles to cope--especially when her husband reveals troubling news. But sometimes a holiday shake-up is all a woman needs to discover what she's truly made of….

Review:  I have a secret weakness for cheesy holiday romance short story collections, and so I thought this would be a fun book to read in the car on the way down to my in-laws to celebrate Christmas.  However, I was seriously put off by the beginning of the first story, when Claire gets drunk in an airport and vomits in the bathroom then runs to catch her plane completely hungover.  I have no interest at all in reading about the shenanigans of irresponsible young women like this, so I gave up on the book.  I did come back to it later and read the last story, "Room at the Inn" by Cindy Myers, which I mostly enjoyed.  It was a nice little story where rich society wife Barb discovers the joy in having a simple Christmas, and in the last page, discovers what she really wants to do with her life.  I read the first page or two of the middle two stories, but decided they weren't my cup of tea either.

Rating: abandoned