Reviewed by Stephen K.
TITLE: The Daddy Clause
AUTHOR: J.S. Grey
PUBLISHER: Independently Published
LENGTH: 322 Pages
RELEASE DATE: December 20th , 2021
BLURB:
The only thing that Will Fisher wished for this Christmas was for his son Silas to be happy in their new home.
Being a newly divorced single dad of a six-year-old can be tough enough, but finding yourself back on your home shores for the first time in years is even tougher. Determined to make this Christmas special, Will takes Silas to see Santa in the pop-up Santa’s magical kingdom that all of London is raving about.
Will gets more than he bargained for when he comes face-to-face with Niko Calus. Santas are supposed to be fat and jolly right? Why is this muscled mystery man making him so hot under the collar this cold winter season? Especially since Will Fisher is straight.
Niko Calus wants everything Will Fisher has to offer, but there is one problem. Niko has a secret, one that could change the world forever. Caught between his obligations to the family business and the inferno of desire ignited by Will, Niko must make a life-altering decision that had far-reaching consequences.
Can Will find happiness back home? Or will his past come back to make this Christmas not so merry?
REVIEW:
This book certainly went in ways that I didn’t expect. In the opening scene we meet Will Fisher a British newly divorced single dad/ ex-pat returning to London after the woman he came to New York for follows her dreams to Hollywood. Will is sympathetically vulnerable and his six year old son is as charming as any munchkin of that age can be.
But then…
Next chapter we meet Niko Calus our Santa figure and are thrown into an odd Sillmarillion type world building chapter. Then we’re back into a contemporary office scene between Will and his abusive feminazi boss. The woman makes Dabney Coleman in 9 to 5 seem mild mannered. Then follows a scene in which our millennia old Santa figure develops an insta-lust crush on Will.
I love the father and son relationship between Will and his son Silas. I liked Will’s relationship with his parents and sister. I even loved the byplay between Nicko and his sister Esme. However too much of this novel felt like a tangled mess to me. Perhaps, Will’s familial back-story, his relationship with Silas’s mother, the Alvavale mythos, the story of Niko and his sister, and the story of a previously straight identified father of a six year old and his romance with Hot Santa were just too much for even a 300 page novel.
Also, several of the women here were almost entirely caricatures. I wondered more than once just how misogynistic the author might be. Silas’s mother is depicted as a thoughtless self-absorbed actress with no maternal instinct, and no redeeming qualities. Melody, Will’s putative boss was a walking worker harassment case. I tried to pass her off as just a failed attempt at humor. However, I found every scene she was in to be grating, and completely outside the tenor of the rest of the story.
Finally, while it makes no sense to argue believability in a Christmas story, A corporation owns less than a one third share of a family farm. Yet they dictate the terms under which that farm was run? Seemed ludicrous to me.
The mix of Christmas fantasy, Greek Myth, and Tolkein-esque tale felt odd and wasn’t at all suggested in the book blurb. Not even the non-binary Atropos was hinted at. There’s plenty of good stuff in this mixed-up stew of a book, but parts of it were just indigestible.
This tale just didn’t work for me. There may well be an audience for this story, but I feel that it needs serious editing & streamlining, a more revealing blurb/description, and a complete rethink as to what’s humorous.
RATING: 
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