Merrily Ever After: A Christmas Collection (Fitzpatrick Christmas #3)

If you loved Catherine Walsh’s books Holiday Romance and Snowed In about the holiday antics of the Fitzpatrick family, this collection of four short holiday stories based in that world should bring a little Christmas cheer to your day!

In four six-chapter short stories, the reader gets to learn a little more about some of their favorite side characters from those two books:

Oliver: Holiday Romance and Snowed In MMCs Andrew and Christian Fitzpatrick’s eclectic cousin who wants to bring holiday cheer to his unrequited college crush and BFF Lara. This was by far my favorite of the collection and honestly deserved its own full-length book. It feels like a missed opportunity not to explore their dynamic more! It is a sweet story, though and put a big smile on my face.  4.25 ★

Zoe: Holiday Romance’s FMC Molly Kinsella’s wildly sarcastic and independent sister Zoe, a single mom to a young son by choice, discovers that sometimes you can’t do everything alone. This was my least favorite. I loved Zoe in Holiday Romance, but here the story felt weighed down by all her various mishaps and struggles, making it a little less fun to get to the happy ending. 2.5 ★

Hannah: Andrew and Christian’s little sister is home with her lovable but crazy Fitzpatrick clan and waiting for her girlfriend Rachel to arrive. Rachel has a big decision to make which could affect her future with Hannah, so Hannah wants to give her a reason to stay and goes to great lengths to get a little privacy with her too! Cue another story with various mishaps, but this one was more fun and enjoyable. 3.5★

Sean: After two books giving us glimpses of the Fitzpatrick patriarch and matriarch, Sean and Colleen, it was so sweet to see their origin story, and how a quiet, stoic young Sean found his way to love with pretty, outgoing Colleen. The path there is fascinating and unexpected, but quite adorable! 3.75 ★

As short story readers know, it’s hard to flesh out a full story in a satisfying way with such necessary brevity, so I appreciate the intention even if all the stories didn’t work as well for me. Catherine Walsh is one of the funniest authors out there - even her newsletters are hilarious, so I’ll take any nibble of her writing I can get until I dig into her newest full-length novel How to Write a Love Story soon!

3.5 (rounded up to 4) ★