Yes, it’s a little after Christmas now, but I recently finished reading Once Upon a Christmas Kiss. This collection of 6 Christmas novellas takes place in Cherry Creek, Tennessee. Each story is written by a different author. Along with all the stories taking place in Cherry Creek, the connecting factor is the book Once Upon a Christmas Kiss. According to legend, anyone who finds the book during the Christmas season will fall in love before Christmas. Cheesy? Okay, maybe a bit, but it’s still a fun read.
While you’ll encounter some of the same people in places throughout the stories, in some cases, the people and places don’t seem quite the same across stories. I will say that I wish that the background stories were a bit different. There was a bit of an overabundance of best friends/childhood friends who hadn’t seen each other in years reconnecting and falling in love. While this is one of my favorite background stories, I would have been good with one or two, rather than most of the stories having this as the background story. Luckily, while the back stories of most of the stories are similar, the actual stories are different. Here are my thoughts on each of the novellas individually.
Once Upon a Christmas Reunion (5 Stars)
Childhood best friends, Scarlet and Duke, secretly crushed on each other as teenagers, but neither admitted it to the other. Now, it’s been 10 years since they’ve seen each other, but you can count on those feelings still being there. This story is both a second-chance romance and a friends-to-lovers story. This is also a story of forgiveness, both of the other person and of themselves. It’s clean with no swearing or violence. There’s some mild kissing, but that’s as far as it goes.
Once Upon a Christmas Treasure (4.5 Stars)
Like the previous story, Amelia and Oliver were childhood best friends who hadn’t seen each other in a decade. While this was an enjoyable book, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the first novella. I don’t want to ruin things, but based on the logistics of the “Once Upon a Christmas Kiss” book, there were some things that didn’t quite make sense. I don’t want to ruin the story, but I’ll just say that the actual book didn’t feel as magical as it did in the previous story. As was the case with the previous story, kissing is as far as it goes when it comes to sexual content. There is no swearing or violence.
Once Upon a Christmas Promise (3.5 Stars)
In this story, we have Laurel, whose ex-boyfriend/ex-boss recently broke up with her and fired her. Combine that with Brandon, a sculptor, who gave up his work after a horrible accident. For me, the idea of the story was great, but the relationship between the two main characters felt a bit off to me.
This book is definitely a little spicier than the other stories in the collection. Spoiler alert here. The two main characters have sex. We don’t get the graphic sexual details, but as a reader, you know it happened. Even before that, the innuendos were a bit stronger than you encountered in the other stories.
Once Upon a Christmas Secret (4 Stars)
In this one, Dawson and Sawyer are previous high school and college rivals. Roughly a year ago, Eleanor died. She was Dawson’s best friend and Sawyer’s twin. She’s now left them a bit of a scavenger hunt to solve together. In the process, they begin to admit their feelings for each other. This book has a few sexual innuendos toward the beginning of the story, which I could have done without. Unfortunately, because of the early part of the story, it was hard to fully like Sawyer or feel like he was good enough for Dawson.
Once Upon a Christmas Wish (5 Stars)
Kayla and Seth were childhood sweethearts. Through a series of events, they haven’t seen each other in a decade (as seems to be a popular part of the backstories of many of these novellas). Kayla’s a little mad at Seth for not returning to Cherry Creek sooner, but ultimately she forgives him. This goes back to the clean novellas without even any minor innuendos.
Once Upon a Christmas Party (5 Stars)
This was my favorite from the collection. Erin and Brock get off to a bit of a rough start when they first meet each other, but they soon discover that they have a lot more in common than they originally thought. They also can relate when it comes to unhealthy family relationships. Erin and Brock were my favorite couple from the novellas because they really are both people who are out to help others. This book has one or two very mild innuendos, but would definitely go in the “clean” novella category.
Final Thoughts
This was an enjoyable read. Some of the stories were definitely better than others. I do wish that the book’s “magical” quality had been the same across the stories. In some, it was like it would magically appear for just the right couple. In others, it was like it could be found by one person and given to another. The great thing is that because this is a collection of novellas, you can likely read one of the stories in a short time. For the last two, I read both on the same day.
1 comment
Comments are closed.