A Merry Little Meet Cute

Finished December 5

A Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone

This holiday romance has a few interesting twists to it. They all made it more interesting. 

Teddy Fletcher is the producer of an upcoming movie, Duke the Halls, who discovers in the opening pages that many of his crew as well as his leading lady have been injured in a freak accident. He must come up with replacements for the crew as well as the star on a very, very tight timeline. 

This is Teddy's first movie for Hopeflix, a well-known producer of holiday romance movies. Teddy has a deep background in producing, but not one Hopeflix is aware of, because it is in the adult movie industry. Teddy is trying to cross into mainstream movies and this can't go wrong for him. 

He's not the only one depending on this movie. The male star is Nolan Shaw, former member of the boy bank INK. He has his own past to overcome. The turning moment for him was being photographed carrying an unconscious Olympic skater out of her hotel room, with two naked speedskaters in the background. It ended both his and her careers. He's been working in local theatre recently, but needs more money to support his mom and younger sister. 

When Teddy grabs his files to meet with his director Gretchen Young to look over possibilities for replacements for the female lead, he grabs a file from his adult movie business by mistake, and when Gretchen sees the picture of Bianca von Honey (the adult industry stage name of Bee Hobbes), she picks her. 

Bee had always wanted to be an actress, but her plus size body wasn't accepted as star material during her school years, and a personal crisis had her revealing parts of her body to the public at a young age, leading her to her current career. She started with an account on Closed Doors, a subscriber only site for many adult stars, and then segued that success into a movie career in the adult industry. She only works for Teddy, as his reputation is good for treating stars and crew with respect. 

This chance to be in a mainstream film is both scary and enticing, but she will have to keep her adult star persona hidden to make it through. 

Unfortunately, when the two leads meet up, Nolan quickly realizes that Bee is the woman that he has ardently watched as a subscriber, and things start to heat up very quickly. 

I liked the humour that pervaded this novel, as well as the depth of many of the issues the book brought up. Things like body image, slut shaming, the nastiness of social media, the financial realities of the US healthcare system, and tabloid-style journalism to name a few.

I'd read Julie Murphy before and liked her style and this new team-up with Sierra Simone is a definite winner and kept surprising me as it flowed along.