Day 21
Reviewed by Marieke
TITLE: The Eve That Finally Happened
AUTHOR: Diana Lennox
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 34 pages
BLURB:
After seven years in Canada, Korean native Jae-ho Kim still hasn’t had the special Christmas Eve date night that he would have enjoyed back home—a fact that has his sister, Soon-kyu, very upset during their yearly phone conversation. This year, Jae’s lack of effort concerning his love life comes back to haunt him in the form of Christmas Eve ghosts, showing him very vividly what will become of him if he refuses to take a chance and find a date for Christmas Eve.
REVIEW:
Jae-ho Kim is a shy, but very stubborn man. He’s from Korea, but lives in Canada so he could have an openly gay reletionship. Except, he’s too shy to approach a guy, let alone flirt with one. He’s been in Canada for six years without a real relationship. Every year on Christmas Eve, his sister calls from Korea to chat with him. Every year Jae gets lectured about his lack of a love life and his attitude about asking his boss Peter Wei out. This year, his sister is especially upset and hangs up.
That night the ghosts of Christmas visit Jae, in the form of his eight-year-old self, his sister and his parents. They show him what he has repressed all of those years. The things he can’t even remember properly, but still have the biggest influence on his life today. His eight-year-old self shows him what happened when he was eleven and just figured out he liked boys. How he changed from that day foreward. He’d lost his best friend that day, but more importently, he lost his confidence in himself. Then his sister shows up, showing him everything he missed when interacting with Peter. How Peter is sitting alone on Christmas too. Finally Jae’s parents let him see his future, how he’ll end up alone and miserable, without a job and his family.
This short story sounded every sweet and romantic to me when I read the blurb. The shy boy from Korea, who is secretly in love with his hot boss. But after the ghost have done their job, showing Jae all that has happened in the past, present and future, it goes downhill.
The moment Jae wakes up and calls Peter, nothing is romantic or sweet. The author has tried to make it a funny read, but in my honest opinion failed… Jae is magically cured of his extreme shyness and his feelings of wrongfulness about being gay. He invites Peter to his house for dinner. Peter acts completely different than I’d expected he would with a shy employe, making is very unbelievable.
The ingredients of a wonderful story are there and the beginning is build up very nicely. But somehow the author missed the opportunity to make this a true Christmas romance. It lacks warmth and comfort; instead it is a poorly executed attempt at humor.
I’ll give two and a half stars for story idea, and an interesting beginning. For promising characters and the cool idea of using a Korean background. But that’s about all I liked about this story.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
The story concept does sound good…
Sounds like an interesting story. Thank you for the review.