Merry and Bright
Home Sweet Holidays • Book 2
by Ali Rosen
Why You'll Love This
A fake-dating scheme hatched at 30,000 feet is exactly as chaotic and swoony as it sounds.
- Great if you want: a quick, feel-good holiday romance with real chemistry
- The experience: breezy and fast — finished in one cozy sitting
- The writing: Rosen keeps the banter sharp and the emotional beats earned
- Skip if: you want depth — at 63 pages, it's intentionally light
About This Book
Two strangers on a flight, one harebrained plan, and suddenly Miriam Brody has a fake boyfriend to survive her overbearing family's Hanukkah gathering in Charleston — and pro football player Cal Durand has someone to deflect his own holiday chaos. What begins as a mutually convenient scheme quickly becomes something neither of them bargained for. Ali Rosen understands the particular dread of going home for the holidays and the unexpected warmth that sneaks in anyway, and she builds that tension — between performance and genuine feeling — with real emotional honesty.
At just over sixty pages, Merry and Bright is precisely the length it needs to be: tight, charming, and completely without filler. Rosen writes banter that feels natural rather than choreographed, and her characters have enough texture that the romance earns its payoff rather than just arriving on schedule. This is a novella that treats its brevity as a feature — every scene pulls weight, and the pacing gives readers that rare satisfaction of a story that knows exactly when to end. Perfect for an evening when you want something warm without committing to a full novel.
