Julia Brown is a single mother who works in the secretarial pool at a large law firm. This Christmas is proving to be a very difficult one for her. Finances are tight with her father in a nursing home and her four-year-old son in daycare and she has just broken off her affair with her married boss, who is one of the partners in the law firm. When Julia meets Victor Morgan, the newest partner in the firm, she is still smarting from her recent break-up. Victor is handsome, smart, and single. He is attentive to her and sweet to her son and in bed they completely rock each other’s worlds.

Victor is quite a catch, and he says he loves her. However, deep inside, Julia cannot help but doubt herself and this suddenly-wonderful relationship that she finds herself in. What Julia needs is to be independent – not to fall into yet another affair with a partner of the firm. High-power corporate attorneys just don’t choose lowly office-workers as mates, and she is fooling herself if she thinks otherwise. And if these doubts aren’t adding stress to an already stressful Christmas season, expensive little gifts keep showing up on Julia’s desk. They are obviously not from the office gift exchange – is her boss trying to rekindle their ended affair? That is one direction that Julia is definitely not going in.

In Jenna Byrnes’ Secret Santa, we have a heroine who engages in self-destructive behavior and finds herself burned for it. This is a well-written and character-driven story, and Ms. Byrnes has definitely given us a memorable and imperfect character in Julia. For two years Julia has indulged in an affair with her boss, knowing he was married but allowing herself to be used as a sexual toy nevertheless. Then when she meets a new man, the first thing she does with him is to have sex with him in his car. Although she is supposed to be a sympathetic character, the impression that this leaves is that of the office floozy instead of a sexy but unfortunate-in-love woman. Julia redeems herself with her love of her son and her father, but I found myself skating very close to the edge of not liking her character at all. Victor is sweet and likeable, but he is not exactly a memorable character. As I read Secret Santa, I kept expecting him to misstep and reveal himself to be a jerk or a user, but he remains Julia’s “knight in shining armor” for the duration of the story. Overall, Secret Santa is a sweet but sexy Christmas-based happily-ever-after story. The flawed characters help cut the sweetness just a little and make this a story well worth the read.

Reviewed by: Whitney