A review by bzliz
A Holly Jolly Ever After by Sierra Simone, Julie Murphy

lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.25

I originally DNF’d this on page 100 but my coworkers love my retelling of bad books and wanted me to pick this back up. The thing that I’m most mad about is that it could have been a perfectly fine romance but the authors couldn’t stop themselves from throwing more tropes into the book blender when they really needed to spend some time with the characters working through their individual issues.

Winnie- a former darling of the religious movie network- is facing scandal after her divorce and rumors her now ex-husband circulated about her infidelity even though he was the one who cheated. Don’t expect her to ever work through that hot mess though because her best solution is to take charge of her life by agreeing to star in a racy Santa movie made for the wholesome Hope Channel’s new venture Hope After Dark and then sleeping with her costar because it turns out she’s bad at acting sexy because she grew up steeped in purity culture and has never had an orgasm. Kallum is the costar in question- a former boybander who now owns a chain of pizza restaurants and has a sex tape in which he says “now that’s what I call tossing the dough” (🤢)- and he’s all too happy to give Winnie sex lessons because his only two personality traits are sex and pizza. 

I have so many complaints that I can only list them because they fill me so deeply with rage. 
  • Worst tropes ever: surprise pregnancy and a miscarriage scare. These could have easily been omitted in favor of actually working through Winnie’s religious trauma and Kallum learning he needs to grow up. 
  • In what universe is the wholesome religious channel branching out into Cinemax-y softcore porn style productions? 
  • The film’s intimacy coordinator asks about boundaries and allows Winnie to simply say she doesn’t have any! That is a huge red flag for doesn’t know shit about anything. It is absolutely this guy’s job to clearly spell out everything no matter how minuscule and to step in whenever necessary to prevent boundaries from getting crossed and to keep everyone safe. But no, they just move on to choreography despite it being crystal clear than Winnie cannot give informed consent because she is absolutely not informed on anything sex related. 
  • Off hand mention of elf orgy in the background of a scene where their characters are fighting 
  • THE SLEIGH RUNS ON SANTA’S PEPPERMINT SEMEN. WHY?? I swear I’m a good person and I didn’t deserve this. 
  • People show up like they’ve teleported in. Winnie’s ex shows up on set (do they not have security at all?) and then her parents show up after she informs them of her pregnancy (at least this was on the street instead of on set but sure, it makes sense that they just materialize behind her)
  • What is this Christmas town and how is it operating? A movie theater that only shows Christmas movies all year? That’s not sustainable. Don’t even get me started on the strip club where the dancers are named after reindeer. 
  • Winnie never tells Kallum about her narcolepsy and it doesn’t make much of an influence on the plot. It seems to exist just so Winnie can be further traumatized by her parents and ex-husband calling her lazy rather than understanding her medical condition but there’s  enough going on. It could have easily been taken out and nothing would be lost. 
  • Kallum’s sister gets on his case for sleeping with someone who’d been in a years long relationship, which is not on him at all since he wasn’t the one in the relationship. Also, sister knew about it minutes after the sex so why did she wait until the girl got engaged to yell at him? 
  • During the above yelling, Kallum (a man in his 30s) has to Google Homewrecker because he doesn’t know what it means
  • Kallum’s sister, her husband & all 4-5 of her kids have names that start with T and I just don’t like that. It’s giving Duggars which is not a good look. 
  • Miscommunication. I hate it so much and I’m sick of these golden retriever MMCs who mean well but say one thing wrong and the MFC goes silent for months and they can’t figure out what they did wrong. And then even after they’re forgiven the MFC will hold it against them forever. When Winnie is thinking about how Kallum is too irresponsible to be a father, she thinks about 3 things, one of which happened legit 14 years ago! Babe, go back to therapy! 
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