This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviews at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @‌thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.

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All the Jingle Ladies is a terribly cute novel that reads very young. Teenagers will love it, but adults might find it tedious. But it’s for the youngsters, so I’m rating this with an optimistic, younger eye. I could see parts of my own silly (though I didn’t know it at the time!) former 15-year-old self in there.

Molly Bell is only fifteen, but she’s determined to forge a grown-up identity for herself. Unfortunately, she has long been stymied in this quest by the success of Love Your Elf, a Christmastime song created by her parents whose music video immortalized her as a child elf. Molly won’t let any of her high school friends know about the video and her fifteen seconds of fame; only Grace Wright, her best friend, knows this deep dark secret. Unfortunately, the song of Molly’s nightmares is about to rear its ugly, jingling head again because it’s set to be on the soundtrack of a new Christmas movie, Sleigh Another Day.

Molly decides to focus in on poor Grace, who’s suffering under the double-whammy of losing her beloved Grampy G and having her boyfriend break up with her before the holidays. Molly tells Grace that they will be ‘single jingle ladies’ — devoted to each other and having a good Christmas even though Molly loathes the holiday, while also eschewing any pursuit of outside romance.

Unfortunately, Molly worries that she’s being disloyal to Grace when she meets and starts crushing hard on Ru, a guy she meets at the Sleigh Another Day premiere. Though Ru isn’t being truthful to Molly about his past, Molly too lies about her status as that little dancing elf. Can she hook up with Ru without divulging her past and hurting Grace? And will the fundraiser to help build a cancer treatment wing onto the local hospital in Grampy G’s memory go awry because of their conflict?

This is such a nice, sweet story that carried a skosh of Judy Blume with it, though this one is a might bit goofy and silly. But it’s easy to like Molly, Grace and Ru, and even the grown-ups here.

Grace’s love of her grandpa is palpable, and the story takes its time exploring her grief between the moments of pure teenage silliness. Molly’s small teenage worries feel properly writ large and also point up to much larger issues regarding loyalty, identity and growing up. On top of that, Ru and Molly’s romance is very cute, and very sweet, and the Christmassy note of the entire project is warm and soothing.

This doesn’t go above a B since it really is a little bit too twee for me, but if you’re a teenager or parent/guardian/relative of one, ignore me. Kids will probably love All the Jingle Ladies, and to them it will probably be a flat-out A.