Explore Merry And Bright Compiled And Edited By Jill Shalvis Available In Paper Copy

were cute, but the set up a little hard for me to buy into, especially the last one, Being that they were short stories it seemed like things moved at super speed, This book isn't what I'd call Christmassy and it's definitely more naughty than nice, The stories held my interest though, Finding Mr. Right
If you can't find Mr, Right, mess around with Mr, Wrong. At least that is the theory Maggie Bell, genius scientist, is working by, So she decides to hook up with Jacob Wahler, currently working on the earthquake retrofitting in Maggie's office, Also her high school crush,
But is her newfound romance a result of great chemistry or the lotion that her bosses have developed

Bah Handsome
Hope O'Brien borrowed money from her stepbrother to try and bolster her aging BampB.
And now the man has sent his accountant, Danny Shaw, to collect, Three weeks early. Right before the Christmas holiday and ahead of a holiday storm that traps Danny in with her for enough time to get to know him a little better, . .

Ms. Humbug
Cami Bennet is a city planner, Matt Tarino is a councilman and interim mayor, He's

filling in because the previous mayor resigned after a scandal with an underage male, The two have always butted heads but will now have to work together to uncover who is trying to tank the entire town, Twohaiku review:

Lady scientist,
Inn owner, city planner
Three women find love

I love Christmas books
Three holiday novellas
All happy endings

Note: This is a reprint of older holiday novellas.
I hadn't read any of them previously, but you might want to check before buying, I read two out of three stories and could not work up the enthusiasm to read the third, The plots were cute and the characters okay, but for short stories there seemed to be an awful lot of sex, I prefer relationships to be more developed before sex is involved, This is a collection of three short stories that I enjoyed for what they were, Short Stories.

The move at a very, very fast pace and so things happen so suddenly, The "I love Yous" too fast, the sex too fast, but meh, . . it is what it is,

This was a relax in the tub book for me, I giggled a few times and I rolled my eyes more times, But I like the holiday theme and they were cute short stories, Finding Mr Right
Brilliant chemist Maggie Bell has a knack for choosing Mr, Wrong, and with yet another lonely Christmas looming, she decides it's time to alter the equation and seek out someone who seems totally wrong for her, Eureka! The heart is a genius, . .

Bah, Handsome
Behind on her bills, BampB owner Hope receives an unlikely guest stranded solicitor Danny, who has been threatening to put her out of business.
Funny how the holidays can bring people together no matter how much they resist, . .

Ms, Humbug
Born rebel or overgrown man child, Matt is the kind of man no woman can tameuntil an unexpected encounter with his nemesis, Cami, at the office holiday party proves there is an exception to every rule.
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Merry and Bright
By Jill Shalvis
ISBN:
Authors Website: sitelink com/
brought to you by OBS reviewer Andra


Synopsis:

Finding Mr, Right
Brilliant chemist Maggie Bell has a knack for choosing Mr, Wrong, and with yet another lonely Christmas looming, she decides its time to alter the equation and seek out someone who seems totally wrong for her, Eureka! The heart is a genius

Bah, Handsome
Behind on her bills, BampB owner Hope receives an unlikely guest stranded solicitor Danny, who has been threatening to put her out of business.
Funny how the holidays can bring people together no matter how much they resist

Ms, Humbug
Born rebel or overgrown man child, Matt is the kind of man no woman can tameuntil an unexpected encounter with his nemesis, Cami, at the office holiday party proves there is an exception to every rule.


:

Finding Mr, Right

From the first page I was drawn into Maggies plightand I totally loved her sisters suggestion! Why not choose Mr, Wrong since Mr. Right on paper that is has not worked out in the past maybe I should take a lesson from her playbook, As it turns outMr. Wrong aka Jacob is an old high school crush who just happens to be working as the guy in charge of earthquake retrofitting her office building,

Maggie is insecure with respect to the opposite sex and I found the interactions between her and Jacob really drawing me in to their journey,

“What, youve never seen a clumsy woman tear her stockings before” “Ive never seen a beautiful woman so unaware of herself before, ”

Let us not forget the humor as well J In one scene, Jacob is sleeping over on the couch, Maggie wakes up in the middle of the night with a big thirst so she goes into the kitchen after standing over Jacob on the couchpeering at himmaking noises hoping he will wake up so they couldwell you know.
While in the kitchen, Maggie does not turn on the light and then hears a noise, Upshot is it does not end well for either Maggie or Jacob and Maggie asks that Jacob not turn on the lights,

“I told you not to,” Maggie said on a sigh, She was sitting in the opened dishwasher tray in a camisole and panty set, bare legs dangling over the sides, her arms bracing her up as she attempted to lever herself off the broken plates beneath her.
“Jesus, Maggie” She had to be cut all to hell, and he rushed forward to lift her out,

Maggie then leaves abruptly and locks her self in the bathroom while Jacob is trying to insist that he look at her derriere for possible broken glass, At this point, Maggie responds in true Maggie fashion and we get a real hard look at her compulsive side when Jacob accidentally knocks her toothbrush to the ground and he picks it up and places it on the counter:

“Wrong side.
” “Huh” “Thats the toilet side of the counter, Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from the toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush, You just put it within four feet, Ill have to throw it away, ”

Besides the really hot story with the really hot Jacob, there was an additional mystery which added depth to the story which kept me guessing until the end.
Slowly throughout the story there emerges a theme of sabotage and the who is a surprise,

Bah, Handsome

Hope OBrien runs a BampB her dream two hours north of Denver but at the moment things are looking dismal, She is behind in paying her bills and with a balloon payment looming in three weeks to her stepbrother Edward ANDshe has not been with a guy in over eight months, whats a girl to do.
Frustrated on many levels, we catch a glimpse of what it is like to be Hope, who is quickly loosing hope, While decorating the inn, Hope and her good friend Lori and support staff for the inn as well as a newlywed are having a fun time when Lori says the following, which caused a grin to take up residence on my face:

“Mistletoe!” Lori snatched up the dried sprig, and held it to her chest like it was a bar of gold.
“Youve been married six months and still drag Ben into the closet whenever you see him, What could you possibly need with mistletoe” “Its for you, ” “You want me to kiss me Well, why didnt you just say so” Hope leaned in and puckered up, “Give me your best shot, ” Laughing, Lori shoved her away, “I dont want to kiss you, I want someone else to kiss you, A peniscarrying someone. ”

As the evening approaches and a snowstorm continues to rage outside, there is a knock on the door, Danny Shaw, Edwards CPA is standing at the door and he is stranded, His rental car is stuck in the snow and he is ill equipped to be in Denvers winter weather, Side note. Hope refers to her step brother as “rat bastard”, Hope does not wish to let Danny in but what is the alternative Let him freeze to death, So she relents and quotes the rate twice what she normally chargesafter allthat is what you charge rat bastards isnt it :, The next morning things start to go downhill as Hope discovers her pipes are frozen, Trust me when I say, from this point in time on it seems that a number of comedic errors occur, Slowly but surely, the two seem to connect on a happier note and more lust filled I might add,

One particular quote had me laughing and happy that Hope was finally appreciating the geeky accountant:

“City rat bastard had a sharp wit, shed give him that.
And a good ass. ”

Many trials and tribulations to get through surprisingly given it is a novella along with more chuckle worthy moments, In the end, a sweet slightly naughty given the shed scene!!! romantic story,

Ms. Humbug

Cami is a professed workaholic, Here it is three days before Christmas and Cami Bennet is working and contemplating the necessity of going to the office Christmas party, As Cami said on the first page:

She liked the big Os order and organization, Orgasms would have been a nice addition to that list, but due to being a little uptightand, okay, a lot anal those kinds of Os were few and far between.


So right off the bat I got a sense of desperation from Cami, not a quality I particularly like, However, there were certainly other redeeming qualities of the story :

With respect to the bathroom scene, poor Cami, her day is just not getting any better until, ” The Kiss”. Of course, the internal confusion and then surprise when she finds out who she is kissing was a chuckle worthy moment, From there I knew that chemistry would take over and the story would flow better for me, And it did. A quick and fun read though the least favorite of the three for me with a bit of a mystery as well,

As always, thank you Jill Shalvis for penning such delightful stories,

OBS would like to thank the publisher for supplying a free copy of this title in exchange for an honest review Merry and Bright by Jill Shalvis is a collection of three short stories set around Christmas.
I dont normally read holiday setting books, but I picked this one up for the Ho Ho Ho Readathon,

Ive only ever read one other book by Shalvis and this collection reminded me why I never pickedup another, While the stories arent bad, theyre just not my thing, If I read a contemporary romance, I tend to want the conflict to stay at believable levels, The fact that Shalvis seems to think that all her stories need a conspiracy or life and death situation annoys me,

The first story, Finding Mr, Right was the best story in the collection, Chemist Maggie Bell has a crush on the contractor working outside of her office, Even though she knows hes completely wrong for her, she decides to pursue him for a short term relationship,

Maggie has the habit of spewing out random facts when nervous, At first I liked this, but the character trait was overused to the point where it started to get annoying, Even though Maggies wikipedia knowledge started to get on my nerves, I still liked her character, I only wish that Shalvis had stuck with character conflict between the heroine and hero to move the plot forward, rather than going the action/conspiracy route,

The second story, Bah, Handsome, features Hope, a BampB owner, who owes a ton of money to her loan shark step brother, When one of her step brothers lackeys shows up at the BampB, Hope doesnt expect to be attracted to the man, This one really didnt work well for me, Hope was annoyingly stubborn and I honestly didnt care at all about the relationship, I also really hated how meddlesome her friends were,

The final story, Ms, Humbug, focuses on city planner, Cami, who discovers the man shes dating is banging the office assistant, Disheartened, she takes up with mayor and long time verbal sparring partner, Matt, Another story that wouldve worked better for me if Shalvis hadnt taken the action/conspiracy route, While this one wasnt bad, I thought the characters were the most underdeveloped, compared to the first two stories, Despite this, I still generally enjoyed the lighthearted tone and bickering between the main characters,

Shalvis has an engaging writing style and her characters are fun, so I can see why her novels are so popular, However, shes not for me, If youre looking for a cute holiday read and are a fan of Shalvis, this is probably worth checking out, sitelink


Jill Shalvis Christmas stories Happiness!

Thats really all you have to know, MERRY AND BRIGHT is a Jill Shalvis orgy of her Christmas stories compiled together in one book, That being said, you may want to check and see if youre already read these stories before since they are reprints of older titles, I havent read them and I wasnt sure what exactly to expect since they are older works of my favourite author, but once I cracked into it, I realized that I had nothing to worry about.
ALL the stories in this anthology are wonderfully written and sweet, I would definitely recommend this to Shalvis fans,

FINDING MR. RIGHTstars

Maggie Bell is a sweet and smart chemist who spews useless, but actually quite interesting information when she is nervous, When in the presence of a bad boy named Jacob, the normally composed brainiac suddenly turns into goo, Its actually quite endearing and made me fall instantly in love with Maggies character, Jacob, the hero is a sinful bad boy who loves talking dirty, I can tell you I had absolutely no complaints about that!

In this short, but scorching story, Shalvis really displays her talents as a writer, I dont know how she is able to create such chemistry in such a short amount of time, but she nails it in this first kickoff story to the anthology.


The only thing I would say is that it wraps up a little too quickly in the end, but the romance is fabulous!

BAH, HANDSOME!stars

Another sweet and sexy story by Shalvis takes a financially struggling BampB owner named Hope and her solicitor Danny and puts them together in a snow storm.
With the help of Hopes friend, Lori and her husband, Ben, they bring the two haters together until all there is is love!
I adored Loris presence in this story.
She added so much life and fun moments to the story, Hopes character was more on the anal, uptight side and I didnt like how she constantly rejected Dannys offers for help, In the end, this story had so many LOL moments and some wonderfully cute and sweet moments as well, making it a perfect read for the holidays!

MS.
HUMBUGstars

What happens when you put a recently betrayed woman with a rebel in nice shoes Explosive chemistry, thats what! Shalvis does it again with this short story featuring Cami and Matt.


This story felt the shortest of them all, but it still packs quite the punch! The banter between Cami and Matt is so entertaining to read that I was smiling from eartoear.
Theres just so much heart in Shalviss stories that when you add the Christmas element to it all, it just makes for a delicious treat fit for the holidays!

copy provided by publisher.