This anthology contains 3 loosely related short stories: all the H/h work for Connoisseur, a food and travel magazine, and the stories take place during the week before Christmas and kick off with the Secret Santa played in the office. There's no need to read the stories in any particular order - or even read all of them, for that matter.
HE'D BETTER WATCH OUT by Janelle Denison (4 stars)
Nice H/h with good chemistry and interesting plot with a touch of humor. There wasn't a definite HEA but that was good considering the whole story lasted only a week. It would have been completely unbelievable to have the H/h making wedding plans in such short time. On a side note: I don't know how the hero managed to keep his job after being caught in flagrante delicto with a co-worker in the boardroom; maybe the heroine's father (his boss) was more liberal than the average employer.
THE NIGHTS BEFORE CHRISTMAS by Isabel Sharpe (2 stars)
The hero was bland, the heroine was a stammering idiot, the secondary characters (her two friends) were annoying, the plot was unbelievable and I didn't like the author's writing - she took forever to give the readers an insight into the hero's mind, which wasn't a smart move considering how short the story was.
MISTLETOE MADNESS by Jennifer Labrecque (5 stars)
Charming, sweet and funny H/h and well-developed plot that kept a smile on my face the whole time while I was reading this story. The HEA was completely believable considering how the H/h had known each other and had been skirting around a love/hate relationship (aka foreplay) for some years.
I don't know what I was thinking, reading a Christmas anthology in July, but it was fun. :) I'm giving this book an overal 4-star rating for the first and the last story only, as I've already erased the second one from my mind.
