Reviewed by annieb123 on
The Truth About Elves is an odd holiday (?) novella about healing and family and emotional growth by Ekta R. Garg. Released 19th Oct 2021 by Atmosphere Press, it's 128 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats.
I'm not at all sure who the target audience is for this book, but as a short read, I did find it well written and engaging. The subject matter is deep (trauma from loss of a child/family member, PTSD, grief) and there is some non-graphic sexual content, so it's not really a kid book (along with the fact that the main protagonist is a 30 something guy working through a lot of life-changing trauma).
There's not a linear plot, the book shifts timeline often and it felt choppy and uneven in places as a result. There's a lot of discussion and description of the whole Christmas eve present delivery and of Mr C himself. The elves are mostly human seeming and the whole elf shtick is traumatized people working through their grief until they're ready to re-integrate into their lives "before".
The language is clean and there's no graphic NSFW content. One strong positive which I liked is that the characters are quite diverse ethnically and it's not an anomaly, they're just written in as real people, not props.
For me personally, the whole elves as folks working through trauma never got off the ground. It's not a fun happy bouncy read and that's fine, but there's very little magic with the magical realism. It's a very very short read, so I certainly didn't feel the time spent was wasted. There were some plot elements which felt contrived and yanked me out of my suspension of disbelief, but again, not egregiously so.
Three and a half stars. It's not polished, but it is certainly competently written and readable.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Reading updates
- Started reading
- Finished reading
- 30 April, 2022: Reviewed