Good Elf Gone Wrong by Alina Jacobs sounds like such a great holiday romance. Revenge? Fake dating? Forced proximity? Grumpy/Sunshine? Delicious! So what happened? Boy, I have no idea and I wish I knew! This was such a wild and weird ride. I had to take some time to digest what I read and really think about it before I could come to a decision on even the rating, let alone the review!
This really felt like 75% was telling one story and then last quarter was telling a completely different story with only the thinnest thread connecting the two. The first three-quarters of the novel was absolutely ludicrous. I don’t know where the comedy was supposed to be. Was it supposed to be funny for the doormat heroine to be ridiculed and embarrassed in front of her uncaring family? Like, the things Hudson said and did to Gracie would’ve been more at home in a bully romance, which is not my genre for a reason. What kind of family is just okay with listening to a strange man their daughter/family member brought home talk about how they’re just with them for raunchy sex? It was just so bizarre. Almost as bizarre as the plot Gracie hatched to destroy her sister’s wedding.
In what world would bringing a “boyfriend” to the holidays so that your sister, who has made a fool of you once already with your now ex-fiance, can sleep with him too so you can get your ex back make sense? You’re tired of being looked down on by your family and pitied for losing a fiance, so your response is to hire a boyfriend for your sister to steal again? It just wasn’t logical. And then to have that “boyfriend” also treat you horribly because that’ll make it better? What kind of person thinks that makes sense? Well, our heroine Gracie I guess!
I haven’t even touched upon Hudson, our hero. He had ulterior motives from the very start and believed that treating Gracie badly would be the best way to go about accomplishing that when he could have, instead, just pretended to fall in love with her. No, the best way to gain Gracie’s trust is to treat her like garbage. Well, I guess he was right because it worked, for him and her family.
This is what we get for 75% of the novel. I had no idea where the romance or comedy was supposed to come in and just kept reading because the spice was good, despite the rest of the story lacking. Then, we have a complete 190 for the last quarter of the book. Hudson suddenly wants to treat Gracie right. He grows a conscious and hates how he has been treating her. The romance starts to kick in and Gracie suddenly gains a backbone. The last quarter of the book was really nice and good and I enjoyed it! I enjoyed the reveal, the last minute ‘betrayal,’ the confrontation, etc. I just thought it was a weird choice that we had to wait until the end of the book to actually get any satisfaction. This was dual-POV as well, so it isn’t like we, the reader, didn’t know what Hudson was thinking/feeling. It really was just an abrupt change.
I’m not sure if I would recommend Good Elf Gone Wrong by Alina Jacobs. If you like bully romances and doormat heroines, this would be right up your alley! If you really were looking for romcom, I’m not sure if this is for you. The last quarter of the book and the spice were the only reasons this got more than one star. Make of that what you will!
