Reviewed by Larissa
TITLE: Eldon
SERIES: Christmas Sprites, Book 3
AUTHOR: Macy Blake
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 104 pages
RELEASE DATE: December 15, 2022
BLURB:
Yule be sorry.
Eldon doesn’t care what Tatum William Bixby the third thinks, he absolutely will not allow the Snowda Shoppe to become some corporate monstrosity. Mistletoe Falls is Eldon’s home, his life’s work, and some stuck-up, irritating, rich grinch will not ruin their small town spirit—no matter how gorgeous and intriguing Eldon finds the annoying newcomer.
Baby it’s cold outside. Frigid even, if the adorable Eldon’s reaction to Tate’s arrival in Mistletoe Falls is anything to go by. His plan to secretly escape to the small town for a much needed break has turned into a challenge to drive Eldon over the edge.
Sweet Eldon has a bite to him, though, and when Tate’s secret emerges, he and Eldon reach a holiday crisis of their own. Will the magic of Mistletoe Falls finally miss its mark, or did Eldon and Tate find love at frost sight?
If you love fated mates, enemies to lovers, and magical elves, er, sprites, who make the season bright, this holiday romance will leave you in pepper-mint condition.
REVIEW:
Eldon, the third book in Macy Blake’s Christmas Sprites series of short stories, is a candy cane-sweet, holiday-themed romance that picks up the storyline of the four magical sprite cousins, Nyall, Oberon, Eldon, and Linus, who unsuspectingly find their true mates. Like its predecessors, Eldon contains zero-angst but maximum happy holiday vibes as Blake tells the instalove story of the skeptical, grumpy Eldon finding and immediately falling for his fated mate, Tatum William Bixby, III, during the holiday festivities in Mistletoe Falls.
The Christmas Sprites stories are best read in order because they are roughly sequential and move quickly, so there’s not much time for Blake to build context into each book. Additionally, the end of each book overlaps with the beginning of the next, setting the stage for the romance of the next cousin.
All of these books surprisingly lack heat; you won’t find much in the way of steamy, sexy scenes. Rather, Blake concentrates her efforts on the purity of falling in love, especially when against the odds, the sprites find that one person they are destined to be with. If you love fated mates stories, this series is like catnip. That being said, the fated mates romances play out differently for each cousin to varying degrees of success. Oberon’s story is terrific, hitting all the right notes despite the few pages available to tell the story. Nyall, the first book, is enjoyable, but suffers from being first in line without any groundwork before it to rely on. Eldon feels different from both of those books in that more time is focused on developing Eldon and Tate’s relationship, yet the premise feels so manufactured it just doesn’t make much sense. Tate is keeping a secret, but I struggled with why the secret was necessary in the first place. Additionally, Tate’s an uber-wealthy guy seeking refuge from his allegedly overbearing family, yet he’s still in close contact with them, and they really don’t seem overbearing at all. The puzzle pieces of the story were thrown down, but they weren’t all picked up or fit into place to complete the puzzle that is Eldon and Tate’s relationship. Notwithstanding, I enjoyed Eldon primarily because of the individual characters. I never got to the point where I was fully invested in Eldon and Tate as a couple, but YMMV.
The best aspects of this series abound in Eldon, though. Small-town quirkiness, festive holiday vibes, and plenty of humor, especially in scenes with Eldon’s cousin Linus. His story is the last in the series, and I am eager to read it. Linus is a tried and true believer in Christmas and mates, so it remains to be seen whether the cousins’ erratic magic is due to what Linus hopes it is: divine intervention and the return of fated mates to the world.
RATING: 
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