Review: The Working Elf Blues by Piper Vaughn

Author: Piper Vaughn

Publisher: Less Than Three Press

Pages/Word Count: 53 Pages

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Blurb: Garnet Evergreen has never heard of an elf abandoning the North Pole for a human, but he yearns to be the first. Ever since he saw Wes, the boy with sorrowful eyes, Garnet felt an undeniable kinship. Over the years, he’s watched that boy grow into a man, and now he’s determined to give Wes a Christmas he’ll never forget. If only Garnet had thought to test his father’s sleigh before leaving…

Orphaned as a child, Wes spends every Christmas alone at his cabin. When he’s woken by a suspicious boom and finds a wrecked sleigh and an unconscious elf, he doesn’t know how to react. Wes isn’t fanciful. He doesn’t give much credence to the stories about Santa Claus and flying reindeer. But a part of him wants desperately to believe when Garnet promises forever, even if life has taught him that no one ever stays…

Review: Sweetness and light and everything right. That’s what I, and I expect many of us, adore about holiday romances—the magic of the season lighting the way for two people to fall in love—and Piper Vaughn delivers that sweetness in The Working Elf Blues, the story of Garnet, a North Pole elf who meets and falls in love with a human, Wes, but that doesn’t mean this story is without its share of complications too.

Loving Wes from afar for fifteen years, Garnet’s decision to choose love over toy-making means sacrifice, which is what brings this story to its climax when Garnet’s risk-taking and rash actions prove not to be consequence free. Leading up to this, however, the author builds a romance on the foundation of a lonely man and the elf who has made it his mission to deliver love and happiness to Wes’s life. It’s a theme that many romances are crafted around, but it’s Christmas and the spirit of caring and sharing that makes Wes and Garnet’s falling in love all the more joyful, finding delight in the simplest of pleasures, all while Wes wonders when it will slip through his fingers.

The Working Elf Blues is a heartwarming story from one of my favorite authors, and is a holiday treat I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you add to your virtual stocking this year.

You can buy The Working Elf Blues here: