4.5/5 (rounded up to 5 on here)

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

WOW! I had no idea I was going to love that book as much as I did. If you love a good romantic comedy with a Hallmark movie vibe, then this is the book for you. I was definitely laughing out loud throughout parts of this book and the puns were amazing! I absolutely loved the setting of a Christmas tree farm during Christmas season. I know it can be a bit cheesy at times, but that was what I was looking for in this book and it did not disappoint! This was also my first book with the trope of single dad and I was definitely digging it! I loved how Codi wrote about the characters and how just wonderful they all were. It is definitely the kind of family/small town vibes that I love in a book.

Personally, I would have liked a little bit more spice as the scenes that we did have felt a little too infrequent for me but I did love them all the same! I did read that this was a follow up book to Nick and Noel's Christmas Playlist but I think it can definitely be read as a standalone. I hadn't read Nick and Noel's Christmas Playlist and still really loved the book but don't you worry, I will definitely be adding that one to my TBR! Overall, if you are wanting a good romantic comedy to add to your list for this Christmas Season definitely add this one!!
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This review will be posted to my Instagram blog (read_betweenthecovers) in the near future!

Thank you to Netgalley and Codi Hall for this ARC.

4⭐️

This book was very easy read and very enjoyable. It wasn't too christmasy, more after Halloween through Thanksgiving and before Christmas period. The story line and the characters kept you wanting to read more and I did laugh out loud throughout the book. I was left wanting to find out more about the MCs and they're future (maybe appearances in other books?). This is a book I would recommend to people.

It started out really strong, but it lost me after it. I liked the setting but it wasn't enough to keep me intrigued and happy.

A sweet romantic hallmark movie kind of book. I truly LOVE narratives that are set into the christmas season("...Sure It's the most wonderful time..." -I know You know the song, right?) Everything that reminds me about Christmas time catches my heart so deeply. And having had read Nick e Noels' christmas Playlist before this one, I can conclude That I appreciated this book more a lot than the first(not that it was bad, it's that this one is better haha) I also like a lot stories with single father and adorable kids making the narrative funny and cute. More than approved!

If there is one holiday romance I think needs to be made into a movie it’s this on. There’s Something About Merry has the perfect mix of sugar, spice, and everything nice to fill the Christmas tree shaped void in my heart as I wait for the holiday season.

I absolutely loved the characters, especially the entire Winters family. They have such a great dynamic and I really loved how welcoming everybody was to Clark and Jace. I also think Merry’s character is the kind of person anybody would want to be friends with. I mean come on, she even saves a puppy at one point.

Overall I loved watching the relationship between Clark and Merry develop over the course of the book. They’re one of those book couples that I really hope ends up with their own perfect happily ever after.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for providing me with a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this follow up to Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist. While it can be read as a stand-alone, it was nice to be able to see some of the other characters from the first book.

This was a sweet and fun read. The supporting characters and family members are great.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.

Omg this book was amazing and had me laughing so much! It was all soooo adorable. I will definitely be reading more by this author!

this was so cute oml!! i read this in july but it genuinely made me miss christmas. the tropes are serving like single dad, second chance, and kind of anonym "penpals"!! the smut was great too.
i just feel like maybe it was all over the place sometimes and i had trouble keeping up but overall it was a great read

This was a cute and fun read! It was great to read in the summer and now I feel like I need to do this more often!
I loved Merry and her family and her chemistry with Clark! I love the subversion and having Clark be shy and Merry be outgoing. I love her family as well.
Clark has my whole heart. He is such a good father and I loved Jace. I loved how his love showed through his actions and just his maturity in dealing with his ex. I loved his character. The single-parent trope always makes me worry that the kid is not relevant to the story, but Jace added to the story. I really enjoyed all of the characters and hope both siblings get a book as well. This was my first Cori Hall book and I enjoyed it. X

Book 4/5 stars
Spice 3/5 stars (would have liked to see more spice - what we got was fast-moving and happened too infrequently for my taste)

I would describe this book as You’ve Got Mail meets your favorite Christmas movie - admittedly, the Christmas movie series playing in my head as I read this story was Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause.

Tropes: hometown hero, found family, single parent dating again, dating app romance, coworkers (kind of?)
Content warnings for the book (not this review): animal abuse/neglect (happens on-page and is discussed on-page again), child sexual assault (off-page, brief - 1 sentence), domestic abuse (off-page, brief - 1 sentence), absent parent / child abandonment (discussed on-page regularly)

Codi Hall did a great job making me fall in love… with our heroine! I definitely liked the love interest, but I found myself more interested in our leading lady. Who doesn’t love a woman who always smells like Christmas cookies, and knits plushie penises? Who is so generous with her time and genuinely kind to everyone she meets? Idk, I might have been projecting the image of Carol from The Santa Clause (Elizabeth Mitchell, anyone?!) onto our sweet Merry Winters, but I can’t unsee it now.

Merry Winters is a great heroine. She is well written and has a very specific personality. It can be hard to believe anyone could have such a big heart and still be able to stand up for themselves without wavering, but that’s the exact type of warm-and-cozy feeling I want in a Christmas romcom. I really rooted for Merry throughout this book to be happy, whatever that meant for her - because that’s what she wishes for everyone around her.

Clark Griffin is definitely a good love interest, don’t get me wrong - just because I liked Merry more doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate Clark as the wood-chopping, flannel-wearing, single-dad-with-a-hard-exterior-but-a-gentle-heart that he is. Clark is soooo into Merry, which of course, I love. There are a few things that he says that made me think “yikes, he’s holding on to some stuff from high school”, which is generally unattractive to me, but I don’t think it ruins the love story or the story as a whole.

The Christmas spirit is captured really well in this book, although there was a little bit of main character syndrome in the main characters - a few conversations about people being scrooges for not liking Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving, how that must mean they’re mean/bad people, etc, and all I could think to myself in those brief moments was “not everyone is Christian / celebrates Christmas, y’all”. These moments were fleeting enough that I could brush past them, but other readers might feel differently.

I believe the absolute heart of this story lies in how family is depicted. Clark is a single father of a young son who is starting to ask questions about his mother, who abandoned Clark and her son moments after giving birth. The way Jace (Clark’s son) is written is a perfect depiction of his age, and of course he, too, has a wonderfully huge heart and loves everyone he meets. He would be a child someone would say has “never met a stranger”. When Clark moves into the foreman’s house at the Winters’ family farm, he finds family with Merry’s parents as adopted grandparents to Jace, and the tight-knit family welcomes Clark, Jace, and Clark’s brother, Sam, into their family unit with open arms, open doors, and matching shirts for family photos. I aspire to love, and spread that love, the way the Winters family does.

My main critical opinions of this book lied in the conflict and the twist. The conflict, which is a classic in a romcom, usually happens in act III. This conflict happened much earlier - I was at around 50% on the ebook and the entire conflict had already happened. This left me confused about where the story would go, and feeling on edge thinking there might be yet another conflict that would be bigger/more stressful and harder to resolve. This leads me to the twist, which I would not describe as a conflict, though while reading I thought it would be another conflict - a character is introduced somewhere after the 80% mark of the book, who brings a sense of stress and negativity to the story. They have a dark/twisted history and also, seemingly, a dark and twisted present. I didn’t think this choice fit with the book or was necessary at all to the story. I would have much rather that character never show up on page - it didn’t drive the story forward, didn’t develop the characters, and overall felt ominous for no reason, given that in one chapter it was completely over. I also was disappointed to see so many easy-to-catch grammatical errors and errors with punctuation/syntax in a digital ARC that was this close to publication - I’m hoping that the book will go through final revisions, because these errors pulled me out of the story as a reader.

Overall, I do recommend this book - I devoured it in two sittings. It felt cozy, like warm cookies, hot chocolate, being snowed in, wearing a nice sweater, and living in a cabin. If you go into this book expecting a blow-me-away 5 stars, you might be a little disappointed. That said, this story is definitely worth reading - especially if you’re the type to watch cheesy Christmas Netflix originals over and over every year and not really care whether it’s necessarily a perfect plot or not. This book was cute, fun, and cozy, and that’s exactly what I needed it to be.

This book is a super cute hallmark movie type holiday novel! The relationship between the main characters is fun and cute, also the male MC is a single dad with an adorable kid! The town and the house that they are staying at has a nice sweet Christmas cozy vibe.

There's Something About Merry by Codi Hall ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Sept 6/22)

In this follow up to Hall's debut (Nick and Noel's Christmas Playlist), readers get to know one of Nick's younger sisters, Merry, who has now lived back at home on the Christmas tree farm for about a year in her own small cottage. She wants to learn more about running the farm but her dad hires a new foreman, serious single dad Clark, who now lives in the other cottage on the farm with his adorable son. She eventually breaks him down and he starts to show her more about the farm, all the while they are actually messaging each other on a dating app and not realizing it.

I enjoyed this one! I think I liked the first one better but it was a solid follow up and I am definitely still excited for the other sister's story, which I assume is to come.

Thank you to @netgalley and @sourcebookscasa for the advanced copy!

Absolutely loved Merry and Clark’s story! A friends-to-lovers trope with a little “You’ve Got Mail” vibe thrown in, it was great from start to finish.

The story takes place at Merry’s family’s Christmas tree farm and has a great secondary cast of characters… Merry’s family and friends, Clark’s son and brother… they all add the “com” to this romcom.

This book was okay. Once I got past the Christmas theming and names, it was alright. A typical small town love story. It was cheesy and predictable but sometimes that works. I finished it to say I did. I don’t really have any other words to describe it. Would I buy it? Nah. But it was alright.

Trying to find “ Mr. Right” in the small town of Mistletoe, ID has proven to be nearly impossible for Merry Winters. When the one man who sparks her interest seems unfazed by her, she turns to online dating in hopes of finding other options. She hopes to balance her time between her family’s Christmas tree farm, her small craft business, and now dating.

As a single dad, Clark Griffin wasn’t expecting much when he decided to sign up for a dating app. Soon develops a great connection with “Knottygirl25”. When they finally meet in person, surprise causes him to make a terrible “first” impression.

There’s Something About Merry is a sweet and spicy Christmas romance. It is book 2 in the Mistletoe Romance series by Codi Hall. It really has a little bit of everything - online dating, single dad MC, small town, second chances, and more. There is the perfect balance of swoony romance and humorous banter. The MCs have great chemistry with just a bit of angst. I really love the Winters family, especially the parents. Mrs. Winters is so welcoming and generous.

This romcom is a little predictable but what romance book isn’t? I had high hopes for this book after really enjoying Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist, and Codi Hall did not disappoint. If you’re looking for fun, holiday romance with a little spice this is a great option. I look forward to seeing where the author takes this series next.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca!

For sure add this to your Christmas list this year! It is THE PERFECT feel good read for the holiday season! I adored Jace and you will laugh out loud at the things he says (the mouths of babes have NO FILTER)! This story has secured a highly coveted top spot in my reads this year!

First of all I think the name is super cute. I was excited to hear Merry’s story after listening to Nick and Noel’s story.

I want to live in Mistletoe! It’s a real life hallmark town! ❤️

Clark and Merry were too sweet from the beginning. They had a bit of history from high school. And we also have a “You’ve Got Mail” situation and I loved it!

Also, Jace was the best kid! Loved seeing Clark and his relationship and also his growing relationship with Merry and her family! Totally what Clark and Jace deserved!

Makes me sooo excited for Xmas!

There's Something about Merry follows Merry who works at her family's Christmas tree farm. She is sick of being single and just wants to find the right guy. However, she lives in a small town and there aren't that many single guys. Clark just moved back and is the foreman of Merry's family farm. Clark isn't looking for romance because he has a son. Nevertheless, he decides to join a dating app. And the person he just so happens to match with is Merry. Now these two go way back and soon they have to decide if it is meant to be or just be friends. 

I was really nervous to read this one because I did not like the first book in this series ( Nick and Noel's Christmas Playlist). But I ended up liking this book way more and I am so happy I gave it a read. It was such a cute Christmas romance. I really enjoyed the overall plot of this one. And I just loved how the relationship between the characters changed throughout this novel. This book seems like it would make such a cute Christmas movie. If you are looking for a cute Christmas romance I would suggest this one. Thank you NetGalley, Sourcebooks, anf Codi Hall for this ARC.

2.5 stars

While I didn't necessarily love Hall's first book in the Mistletoe Romance series, I was drawn into this book by the promise of a festive version of You've Got Mail. I was hoping that maybe the lack of Christmas and underdevelopment of the romance that had occurred in the first book was a one-off.

The best parts of this novel were definitely the dating app conversations that Clark and Merry were having virtually as well as the bundle of cuteness that was Clark's son Jase. However, I still felt like there was not nearly enough Christmas in this book considering that the family lives on a Christmas tree farm, both protagonists are involved in its operations, and the book takes place between Halloween and Christmas. On top of that, there are so many subplots that occur throughout this book that crop up once or twice and then are barely mentioned again. There are also some fairly triggering scenes and topics being discussed in this book, one of which is included for the sake of being cute and another that is nowhere near as developed as it should be considering how much it plays into the ending of the book.

All in all, it felt like there wasn't a lot of room for this romance to breathe and what I assumed to be just a fluke in Hall's first book might just be a writing style that I don't necessarily vibe with.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for an ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review!

There’s something about Mistletoe, Idaho that I just can’t get enough of! Having read Nick and Noel’s Christmas Playlist this past December, I was excited to see a second book coming out so soon! I loved the Winters family then, and I still love them now.

Merry has moved back home to Mistletoe after a string of poor relationship decisions. Having spent some time focusing on herself, Merry is surprised when she encounters Clark Griffin on her family’s tree farm and begins to have feelings for the single dad.

Clark and his son, Jace, have been on their own for the entirety of Jace’s life. When the opportunity arises to head back to his hometown to help run a tree farm, Clark moves back to Idaho. Walled-off to protect his son, Clark doesn’t anticipate falling for his boss’s daughter.

I really enjoyed Merry and Clark’s story. Clark’s history with his parents and Jace’s mother has made him a wonderful father. Seeing how much he cares for his son warmed my heart.

I can’t help but wish I was part of the Winters family. Victoria and Chris are so supportive of their children and welcome everyone into their tight-knit family.

This was the perfect Christmas in July read, and I can’t wait for more from Codi Hall!

Thank you NetGalley and Sourcebooks Casablanca for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.