The Christmas letters of the title barely feature here, they’re just the kicking off point rather than integrated throughout the story, which was a little disappointing as I’d hoped they would add something different to the story.

Bess and Jack are longtime friends, he’s a widower with three daughters, finally ready to move on romantically only for whatever reason he doesn’t come right out and tell Bess she’s the one he wants to move on with, so Bess who’s been in love with him forever, believes the best she can get with him is a no strings affair until Christmas.

That no strings affair led to this being much heavier on sex scenes than I generally expect in Harlequin’s Special Edition books, the frequency here was more on par with what the old Blaze line of novels used to be. I don’t mind explicit sex scenes, but I did feel like at least some of those pages would have been better used to develop the emotional side of their relationship instead, for so-called friends these two were terrible at communicating with one another, particularly towards the end. Plus, an overabundance of sex scenes becomes tricky when one of the characters is a single parent, between spending his days as a surgeon and his nights at Bess’s having sex, at a certain point I started to wonder if Jack spent more than ten minutes a day with his girls. There’s something appealing about a good, attentive dad, not so much a dad consistently pawning the kids off on their nanny. ( )

A friends to lovers romance set at Christmastime between rehab nurse Bess, and widowed surgeon Jack, who has three young daughters. Unfortunately, this book didn’t work for me at all and I never found myself caring about the characters. Bess was too desperate for a husband and kids. Jack’s dead wife’s presence was felt too prominently throughout the story. The kids were probably supposed to be cute, but they came off as annoying instead. There was too much waffling back and forth as to whether Bess and Jack should take their relationship to a more intimate level, and too many sex scenes. And I really didn't like the whole friends-with-benefits thing. The one thing I was curious to see was also a disappointment. So much of the book focused on what the kids wanted for Christmas, and at the end of it all, Christmas day was completely skipped in the story and I never got to see what they thought of their gifts. This story was pretty much a bust for me. ( )

A Tale of Two Christmas Letters is sweet. A Tale of Two Christmas Letters is sweet. With a doctore hot enough to set off fire alarms, a sassy beautiful nurse, and three little girls in the mix, this is a sweet way to kick off the holidays. A little bit of hope are just what Jack and Bess need to make it through their holidays and maybe the rest of their lives. A little sloq moving at times, but sweet all the same. ( )