Published December 2024 via Three Brother's [sic] Press
★★
Santa and elves and a whole lot of boinking, oh my!
This is conceptually cute—in a twist on the tried-and-true heir-to-the-throne-has-to-find-a-spouse-in-a-staggeringly-short-amount-of-time-or-be-disinherited plotline, here the heir is, well, the next Santa. Nicholas has a good life...but not a very responsible one. He'd rather throw the Christmas parties and shag an elf or two or twenty than take on the mantle of responsibility. Meanwhile, Alva has trained her whole (young) life for responsibility—and as head elf, she basically keeps the place running (while Santa and Mrs. Claus get the credit, naturally). Her latest task? To speed-run a series of events to help Nicholas choose a wife from a horde of mostly nameless, faceless young
This is a novella, and I think the short length is working against it. With even a couple of plotlines, there wasn't the space for them to do anything other than go from A to B to C, or sometimes just A to Q to Z. For example: Frost Queen is ruining things? Okay, better find the person who knows what to do (check), follow her instructions (check), and fix it (check). Nicholas and Alva don't like each other but need to be in love by the end of the book? Okay, better give them the irrational hots for each other (check), get them a-banging (check), and have them ready to give up anything and everything for each other within a few short chapters. (Check, in case you were worried.) A longer book could have given this more room to breathe, and more room for their relationship to develop beyond insta-lust.
Not loving Nicholas, who describes Alva as a ruthless harpy (9) and the only female I'd met who didn't seem the least bit interested in what I had to offer (18) and then, once he's boinked her, thinks that If anyone had truly won here, it was her, because no other female had ever been able to enthrall me like she had—demanding my full attention, making me want to worship her body like my life depended on it (42). My dude, when your reaction to having the hots for someone is "she's the real winner, because I have chosen her", then you, sir, are a tool.
What I really struggled to read beyond, though, was the constant use of "female" as a noun. At least it goes both ways here—male characters are also referred to as "males" (on occasion)—but the barrage of "females" feels constant. It's 2024; 37 uses of "female" as a noun is 37 uses too many and makes not just Nicholas but all the characters (including the women, who also use "female" as a noun) sound like raging misogynists (to say nothing of Santa's casual classism or racism or whatever it is when he thinks that Nicholas pursuing an elf for anything beyond sex is beneath him). Don't think I'll be reading future books set in this universe.
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