Title: The Chimney Sweep
Author: M.J. Padgett
Series: Life in Chatswain City, book 5 can be read as a standalone novel
Age Category: Adult
Published by: self-published 2018
Pages: 125p.
Genre: Christmas feel good
About The Chimney Sweep
George is one of Santa's elves, who is just doing his duty by delivering presents on Christmas Eve. Until he runs into this beautiful woman with a shotgun in her hand.
In this cute Christmas romance, the stakes are high for George, as one kiss could mean losing immortality.
My thoughts on The Chimney Sweeps
This was adorable, it gave me all the Christmassy vibes I wanted. And I thought the start was very clever and funny being held a gunpoint. The story is told from George's perspective, and he does not know a whole lot about humans. He does not know how appliances work and doesn't know many of the sayings, of humans, which makes for very funny conversations and situations.
I like that we try to figure out through George's eyes what is the matter with Camilla, as a human reader we see that something is eating at her, but since we are only getting George's point of view, you are not sure what happened with Camilla in the past. We also learn about George's world at the North Pole. Small bits of information are given throughout the story.
What I thought was a bit of a letdown is that we do not know why the chimney was so clean, it gets mentioned a couple of times however, we never get an explanation for it. My first thought was that Camilla would be a chimney sweeper, that would have been special. However, it turns out that Camilla is a police detective. So is her chimney so clean because she is never at home to use it? I might have gone with a different title, which has more of a Christmas feel to it, the cover art does help with selling it as a Christmas story, but I would not have known this from the title.
Rating The Chimney Sweep
Overall this was a cute little Christmas romance novella, it is a cozy story to read before Christmas and has something magical. I think this counts as a fantasy romance story, as we have the North Pole, with elves, Santa, and flying reindeer. But we also got a bit of new technology, devised so the elves could communicate with the reindeer, and also a more modern sleigh that does not need reindeer to pull it. So Santa has been modernizing.
I thought this was cool, it gives the old Christmas magic a more modern feel.
These clever little details make this read 4 cats.
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