Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: The Novelty Maker
AUTHOR: Sasha L. Miller
PUBLISHER: Less Than Three Press
LENGTH: 53 pages
RELEASE DATE: January 17, 2013
BLURB:
As often as he can possibly manage, Cole slips away from the parties and teas inflicted upon him by his mother to visit Harlowe, the brilliant, mercurial novelty maker he met several months ago when commissioning a piece for his mother. Overwhelmed with work, and preferring to avoid people, Harlowe is not an easy person to know, and Cole values too much their hard-won friendship to ever risk it by telling Harlowe of his true feelings. Then Harlowe begins to receive letters from a secret admirer …
REVIEW:
Novelty toys are all the rage for the wealthy people in the city of Cadogan. But it is not the toy box that Cole has ordered for his mother that keeps him dropping in on Harlowe, a brilliant and talented novelty maker. It is Harlowe himself. And even if Cole can not get up the courage to ask the man out, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy the friendship they have crafted for themselves. But when a mysterious man starts sending Harlowe love letters, Cole might just have to find the courage to act before he loses his chance at the mysterious novelty man behind the leather mask.
A bit of a scheduling snafu this week meant that I had to quickly find a book to review for today. Since I didn’t have a lot of time I thought I would go back thru my library and find a short story that I enjoyed in the past and give it a review. I had quite a few short stories to choose from, that I’ve read over the years, but when I cam across this one, I knew that I wanted the chance to read it again.
Like almost everything I’ve read by Sasha L. Miller, I found this book entirely charming and a wonderful read. The characters are well written, the fantasy world is interesting, and by the end I am left with a good story and a very happy sigh. This story is definitely on the sweeter side, so don’t be expecting a lot of sex, but it has a terrific romance and I really didn’t find myself missing anything.
The only issue I have at all with this book is that the formatting was a bit wonky on my kindle. The indents for the start of each new paragraph were nearly three time the depth they needed to be. Nothing was wrong with the story, but this weird formatting kinda kept throwing my out of my reading headspace.
Other than that this was very good and I totally recommend it. And, as a bonus, if you want to check this one out it is free on most (if not all–but I didn’t check all of them so don’t hold me to it) book store sites.
RATING: 
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