Seas and Greetings is a novella set in the Christmas Notch series (between book 2 and 3) by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone.
Finished on: 4.1.2026
[Here are my reviews of the other books in the series.]

Plot:
Addison Hayes has a plan, and this plan currently hinges on her lifestyle influencing selling her new cruise (and then, expand to hotels, and finally the world). On its maiden voyage, Addison knows that everything has to go smoothly from flower arrangements to the musical that is definitely not based on Twilight. To insure that things go as smoothly and safely as they can, Addison has hired Krysta Morton to be personal bodyguard. But when Addison gets threatening notes, telling Krysta about it seems to be more of a complication than anything else, even if Krysta’s stern and somewhat hot rules include telling her everything. Plus, Krysta doesn’t even seem to like her. But both the threats and Krysta take on a different tone the more time passes on the cruise.

After a good start, the Christmas Notch series hasn’t really been working for me as much as I had hoped, but Seas and Greetings takes a good second place in my ranking of the series parts (I have not read the final book yet). It’s fun, it’s sweet, and has loveable characters.

We met both Addison and Krysta in the last Christmas Notch book and I liked Addy in particular, although I am not really one for (lifestyle) influencers and would probably run away from her products if I encountered them in real life. But Addy’s warm personality and her unflinching loyalty endeared her to me, and I loved that I got to spend more time with her here.

Krysta as a love interest was a harder sell for me, for one, I don’t necessarily like the dynamics with bodyguard romances, especially not when coupled with a daddy or – in this case – mommy kink. That just doesn’t float my boat (no pun intended). Fortunately, they don’t lean too hard on that, so I was able to ignore it for the most part.

I did wonder why Addy would immediately jump to „Krysta doesn’t like me“ from her behavior, it seemed to push things a little too hard to fulfill the enemies-to-lovers trope, but since that was resolved pretty quickly and without much drama, I didn’t mind that either. And generally I liked the way their relationship developed, despite the short time frame. Also, they had some pretty good sex.

The suspense plot seemed a little ridiculous, to be honest, but I guess they needed some reason for Addison to have a bodyguard. In any case, it was more than made up for by both Addison’s cousin/party-seeking personal assistant and, above all, the cruise musical that definitely has nothing at all to do with Twilight. They had some amazing ideas for the adaptation, making me almost sad that it doesn’t really exist.

So, overall, it was definitely a fun read with some excellent jokes and a really lovely group of characters. One can definitely do worse than read this.

Summarizing: good entertainment.