CHRISTMAS CARDS FROM THE EDGE

Author: Jennifer Ashley, Lisa Cach, and Naomi Neale ISBN: 0505526573 10/2005 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: DORCHESTER/Love Spell

HOLIDAY MADNESS: One wannabe dominatrix. A sexy Scotsman. Twenty-seven relatives. An ex-convict uncle on the lamb. A sheriff hot on his heels. A Christmas pageant decorated like a department store white sale. A Tony award-winning actor better known for his Heat-n-Eat Meat Pie ads. A town conspiring on Christmas Eve to keep Manhattan refugees from escaping back to the city. What are three nice girls to do? Play naughty.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

CHRISTMAS CARDS FROM THE EDGE is the "play naughty" holiday anthology offering from Love Spell. It's not the quick read most Christmas anthologies are, but two of the stories are quite good.

The first story is Return to Sender. Unfortunately, I didn't find it very enjoyable, as much as I usually love holiday stories. The professor/costume designer heroine is sour and desperate, and she ruins the story for me. However, the dashing Scotsman hero is fairly yummy, and I did like the costume details. I guess the naughty in this case means clinically detailed, explicit sex, though not necessarily with a sense of fun or holiday magic.

The second story is Jennifer Ashley's The Single Girl's Guide to Christmas, and it was entertaining. The naughty in this story is a very kinky cousin who reunites heroine Angel with her lost love when she travels to Napa Valley to spend Christmas with her family. Angel has built her career around being a single girl but it might not take very much persuasion to change her status.

Lastly, we have O Little Town of Kettlebean. This story, by Naomi Neale, is quite special and invokes the spirit of the holiday. The romance in this story is almost incidental as we visit with three New York theater folk who are stranded in a small town in the days leading up to Christmas. The naughty townspeople trick them into helping out with the local Christmas pageant, and in the process help the heroine, Riley, to both find love and learn life lessons.

Heather Hiestand