53 pages • 1 hour read
Julie Murphy, Sierra SimoneA Merry Little Meet Cute
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary: “Teddy Ray Fletcher”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of R-rated sexual content, sexual harassment, bullying, and mental illness.
Teddy Ray Fletcher, the head of a company that produces adult films, is dismayed to learn that several members of the crew of the Christmas-themed romantic comedy he is producing have been incapacitated due to an accident. This includes the leading lady, Winnie Baker. Duke the Halls is being created for the conservative Hope Channel and their streaming platform, Hopeflix. To sell the movie, Teddy needs to distance himself from his pornography production studio company, Uncle Ray-Ray’s. When Teddy meets the director of the movie, Gretchen Young, he accidentally shows her a topless photo of Bianca “Bee” Hobbes, one of his most bankable performers. Seeing it, Gretchen wants Bee to fill in as the leading lady. Teddy is vague about the nature of Bee’s work—she creates adult movie content under the name Bianca von Honey—and tries to dissuade Gretchen. Eventually, he agrees because he is hoping for a good financial return from the movie. He knows that he and Bee will both have to hide their involvement in the porn industry from Hope Channel executives and that this is risky.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Bee”
Bee’s best friend is Sunny, her roommate in Los Angeles and fellow porn actor. Sunny helps Bee pack for her flight to Vermont, which entails emptying Bee’s two suitcases—usually filled with sex toys. As Sunny debates what lube Bee should pack, Bee reminds her that the movie is for Hopeflix: “If my grandmother’s stack of pioneer romance novels and megachurch energy had a baby, it still wouldn’t be as squeaky clean as the Hope Channel” (11). Bee began her career by posting to ClosedDoors, a paid subscription app, after creating a stir in 12th grade when she posted a topless photo of herself to pre-empt a “revenge porn” attack on her by a classmate.
Though she has encountered discrimination due to her plus-sized body shape, Bee loves her work, which she considers “a big middle finger to everyone who ever told [her she] had a pretty face or that no one would want a body like [hers]” (16). Her job gives her a sense of power, control, and community. Though Bee is nervous about taking the Hope Channel role, she has always wanted to act in mainstream films. As Sunny drives Bee to the airport, she jokes about Bee’s teenaged infatuation with Nolan Shaw, ex-member of the boyband INK. Bee worries about being recognized as a porn star and wonders what her parents will say about her not coming home for Christmas. Bee’s parents are both women, her “two moms.”
Chapter 2 Summary: “Nolan”
Nolan walks through the town of Christmas Notch, Vermont, noting how quaint and Christmas themed it is, as the town’s entire economy rests on being the setting for the Hope Channel’s holiday movies. Nolan hopes his role in Duke the Halls will rehabilitate his reputation, which was tarnished by an international Olympic scandal involving an American figure skater. Nolan is concerned for his mother, who is living with bipolar disorder. He also feels responsible for his sister, Maddie, who is still in high school. After the manager of INK left the band members broke, Nolan has been making ends meet by working for his local community theater, but he is hoping to find higher-paying work through Duke the Halls.
Nolan is impressed when he meets Gretchen, who was a child star and who is committed to making the film. Nolan worries about annoying her when he takes calls from his manager and then his mother. His manager, Steph, reminds Nolan that he has promised the channel his best behavior: “Until your brand is rehabilitated, you will be as pure as the driven snow they’re staging for this movie” (29). Gretchen asks Nolan to be kind to the new female lead, Bee Hobbes. Nolan is cheered when he sees that his porn-star crush, Bianca von Honey, has posted a new video. In costume as the duke, he walks outside to see Pearl—the scriptwriter and Gretchen’s girlfriend—giving a tour. He discovers that Bee is Bianca von Honey.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Bee”
Bee has firm instructions from Teddy to abstain from sex on set and not let on that she makes porn. Bee is struck by meeting Nolan Shaw but is worried that he’s going to dismiss her as being “fat.” Bee recalls how, when she was 14, she waited three hours to see him after a concert in Dallas, but the INK group left immediately after their show. They converse, and Nolan seems friendly, though Bee wonders why they don’t yet have the last page of the script, which is supposed to reveal the true meaning of Christmas. Bianca settles into her room, the Mistletoe Suite, at the Edelweiss Inn. She notices that her phone has texts from her moms and notifications about her ClosedDoors account, which is hugely popular. She likes that she can choose her own content and thinks that “[b]ody positivity might [be] having a moment” (47). Bee is delighted to see the costumier Luca, whom she knows, and learns that Luca detests Nolan because he ruined ice skater Emily Albright’s chance at a gold medal in the Olympics. Bee notices that the costumes were made for Winnie, who is much smaller, but Luca is confident he can alter her wardrobe.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Nolan”
Nolan realizes that he will have to keep things chaste with Bee. He reflects, “I’d seen enough weird comments on her pictures and videos to know that an uncomfortable number of subscribers felt entitled to her body and to her attention” (52), and he doesn’t want to be one of them. When he asks Luca for help altering his costume, Luca merely offers him a needle and thread. Nolan is irked by his attitude, reflecting, “I’d been an upstanding bisexual citizen since [the Olympic scandal]! I went on very normal, disappointing dates! I had health insurance, and I hadn’t been in a single other circus-train orgy!” (55).
When he wakes up the next morning with an erection, Nolan decides that the way to deal with it is to borrow the hotel’s gingerbread-scented lotion and masturbate to Bianca von Honey’s last post. After getting his hair done by Denise, Nolan goes to the mansion where he will be filming scenes with Bee, one of which is a kissing scene. His friend and former bandmate Kallum texts, and Nolan thinks about how Kallum, after INK, has made a success with his pizza-parlor franchise. After his father died, Nolan moved back home to be present for his mother and sister. Gretchen approaches Nolan, and then Bee enters the room.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Nolan”
Nolan thinks, “Bianca von Honey was just as stunning in yards and yards of silk as she was wearing nothing at all” (66). He likes her corset, and she jokes that her boobs look fantastic. She gives the gaffer, Angel, a hug, and Nolan is jealous. Because they don’t have an intimacy coordinator on set, Gretchen leads Bee and Nolan in a rehearsal for their kiss. Nolan thinks, “[T]here was nothing I wanted more in the entire world, and also I was scared to death of getting it at the same time” (69). As they act out the scene, Nolan tries to remind himself not to get confused with the story or the fantasy, but when Bee kisses him, introducing tongue, he nearly forgets his lines. He realizes that it is going to be difficult to resist her.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Bee”
Bee finds that filming mainstream movies can have moments as awkward as filming porn. Angel and Luca invite her to visit the North Pole, a strip club, but Bee passes. She’s thrilled about working with Gretchen, whose career she has admired, and getting to kiss Nolan Shaw, her teenage crush. Not only did she have many youthful sexual fantasies involving him, thanks to the posters in her bedroom, but after the band broke up, she also resorted to reading sexualized fanfiction. Bee has a video call with her moms, with whom she has a warm and loving relationship. Nolan knocks on her door, inviting her to practice lines the next day. The next morning, Angel wakes her while trying to find his own room. Bee asks him to take a picture of her posing for her ClosedDoors account.
Prologue-Chapter 6 Analysis
These opening chapters establish the humorous tone that permeates the comedy and introduce the elements of parody in the premise. The fictional Hope Channel is a parody of the real-life Hallmark Channel, known for its production of holiday-themed movies, which are often considered to rely on predictable settings and scripts that recycle a limited number of scenarios. The premise of the book borrows a staple of both the romantic comedy and the screwball comedy: the use of secret identities and troublesome pasts. This draws its charge from the tension of the protagonists needing to deny their sexual background and impulses in order to maintain their movie roles, which they are pursuing for reasons of financial opportunity and prestige. In this way, the novel follows the traditional romance premise of overcoming obstacles to achieve love. These obstacles are established in this opening part.
A further hilarity, and tension, lies in juxtaposing the two modes of entertainment: the porn industry that Teddy and Bee, as Bianca, are involved in and the saccharine family-friendly romances of the Hope Channel. The novel’s comparison subverts the assumption that porn content is of less artistic quality compared to mainstream entertainments, as the authors continually challenge this assumption with jokes about Bee’s highly creative scenarios as Bianca.
The novel is also interested in challenging the idea that sex outside marriage, including sexual content, is immoral or shameful, setting up a tension between this judgment and the novel’s own approach. In this opening section, the novel establishes this through the characters’ fears and secrets, especially Bee’s awareness that producing content for her ClosedDoors account might violate the morality clause in her contract and Teddy’s repeated warnings that “there w[ill] be no crossing streams when it c[omes] to filthy porn and wholesome Christmas content” (13). Teddy’s imagery emphasizes the need to keep these worlds distinct, as free expression of sex and desire in the one realm would be considered contaminating to the other. Since Nolan has experienced the consequences of this kind of sexual moralizing with public reactions to his alleged polyamorous encounter with the Olympic figure skater, his past experiences serve as a reminder of the risks involved. These layered experiences help to establish the theme of The Painful Effects of Discrimination.
The novel portrays the porn industry as valid and respectable—and less hypocritical than the Hope Channel—in several ways, part of the authors’ promotion of The Pursuit of Pleasure. This is especially evident in the warm, respectful relationships among the employees of Uncle Ray Ray’s, including Bee, Angel, Luca, and the hairdresser, Debbie. They all have vibrant personalities but are shown to be professionals performing their work with attention and care. The novel makes explicit the specific requirements of their work to construct boundaries that allow safe sexual expression and maintain personal respect. These characters are all also aware that the relative value with which their work is perceived can make them vulnerable in different ways.
Although the internal industry is portrayed positively, the authors also explore how external behaviors and perceptions can be damaging. The novel uses Bee’s experience with her ClosedDoors channel to comment on how consumers objectify and disrespect actors. Since the incident that inadvertently launched Bee’s career was her attempt to pre-empt “revenge porn” by a boy at school, the novel engages with the complexities of personal autonomy. Bee has since been able to exert control over her own image, though the authors, through Nolan, note how often she is objectified by her own fans. At this early stage, the challenge to Bee’s hard-won freedom and control is latent, as her secret is safe, if fragile. This latent threat foreshadows the public revelation of Bee’s sex work later in the narrative.
The novel’s treatment of Bee’s and Nolan’s images, and, to a lesser extent, Kallum’s, touch on the theme of The Dissonance Between Public Persona and Private Self in alluding to the potential dangers of the parasocial relationships that fans can develop toward admired celebrities. While Bee and Nolan have each fantasized about each other, their awareness of this fantasy makes them initially reticent with one another in real life. This enlivens the sexual tension created by their immediate attraction, which ratifies their previous attraction to one another’s celebrity image. At this point in the novel, this attraction is mostly physical, setting up the deepening of their relationship as the novel progresses. As they come to know each other better, the novel shows them increasingly drawn to one another’s private selves over the public persona they previously perceived. This will drive the novel’s romantic narrative arc.
