Title: Yuletide Treasure
Series: Goddess-Bless: Book Three
Author: Eliot Grayson
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 130 Pages (story ends at 87%)
Category: Historical, Holiday Romance
At a Glance: Yuletide Treasure is a heartwarming holiday read, not a faithful retelling of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but a feel-good story in its own right.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: There’s not enough Yuletide spirit in the world to fix this holiday disaster…
Eben Sypeman’s world is falling apart. It’s two days before Yule and his business partner is dead, leaving behind empty accounts and looming bankruptcy. And if that isn’t bad enough, his patron goddess is irritated with him. It seems she’s tired of his tendency to mince words and avoid conflict. She’s insisting—quite forcefully—that he start being totally honest with everyone, including himself. Divinely enforced honesty couldn’t have come at a less opportune time, especially when his clerk’s tall, dark and distractingly handsome son enters the picture.
The last thing on Tim Pratchett’s mind is romance. All the former soldier wants is to fill in for his sick father at work and recover from his war wounds in peace. But there’s something about the grumpy Eben that confounds and entices him in equal measure. Their timing couldn’t be worse. They’re complete opposites. And yet … none of that matters when he’s with Eben.
But if Eben and Tim have any hope of finding their very own happily ever after, they’ll have to survive a dickens of a truth curse and the machinations of a trickster goddess—all while searching for enough yuletide treasure to save them all.
A joyous, relaxing Yule indeed. Bah, humbug.
Review: “Marley was dead: to begin with,” is such an iconic opening line. Author Eliot Grayson’s “John Marney was dead,” is—much like Yuletide Treasures—close enough to the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol to be recognizable, yet is unique enough to be an homage to its model without it being a direct retelling of the classic holiday redemption story.
Marney acts as villain in Grayson’s tale, posthumously, of course, to Eben Sypeman’s less miserly but no less misanthropic protagonist. Eben is, however, a rather endearing character, when it comes right down to it, who begins to make sense the more we get to know him. He is also much, much younger than the Scrooge of Dickens’ tale. Eben is a young man, handsome. And not a bit wealthy, which is the crux of the story pared down to its simplest form. Eben doesn’t know how to say “No”, he hands out money left and right to his family—money he doesn’t really have to give—and when Marney dies and Eben begins poring over Marney & Sypeman, Importers’ ledgers, he discovers a horrific discrepancy. His business is bankrupt, which means he can no longer afford to pay his clerk, Bob Pratchett, let alone provide for himself or his family.
Enter Pratchett’s “little Timmy” to offer his assistance, something Eben eventually, quite grudgingly, accepts after a visit from his patron goddess and voyeur Althyone.
Timothy Pratchett, it is immediately revealed, is not at all little. In point of fact, he’s a grown man and wounded war veteran, which accounts for the cane and his limp, and for the lack of success in finding work to help with his family’s care and upkeep. Timothy isn’t necessarily cut out for office work, but he has a fine hand and a will to help, so when his father takes ill and the loss of income threatens the Pratchett clan, Tim steps into Eben’s office and, more importantly, insinuates himself into Eben’s life in what will turn out to be truly lovely and beneficial ways. Much to Eben’s initial consternation.
Yuletide Treasure, to my surprise, becomes a bit of a mystery before its end, which I enjoyed. Eben and Tim working together to follow the money trail, and find where Marney hid the funds he’d extorted from the business, provides them the opportunity to grow close in a short amount of time. A bit of forced proximity and a common goal to rescue both the business and the Pratchett family offer a sense of united front along with their undeniable attraction to each other.
The Goddess aspect of the story isn’t fleshed out in depth. This being book three in the series, I suspect I missed out, not having read the previous books, but it didn’t deter from my overall enjoyment of the story, either. The world in which Eben and Tim were open to love each other and live as a couple rounded out the joyous elements of their romance. Althyone plays a critical, albeit playful and mischievous, role in place of the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future. And all thanks go to her for her intervention in Eben’s life at a crucial time, inspiring him to speak up for himself and claim happiness with Timothy.
Yuletide Treasure is a heartwarming holiday read, not a faithful retelling of the Dickens tale, but a feel-good story in its own right.
You can buy Yuletide Treasure here:
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