"The Holly and the Ivan" (Drollerie Press) is a delightful holiday story with elements of magic woven into the romance and mystery. Rachel Olivier is a master at using just the right word. Every sentence feels chosen, not merely written. She makes me want to tether myself to a thesaurus!
Holly is a pretty barista cum girl band singer who meets 2 very different men in her coffee shop and invites both to be VIPs at her concert that evening. Mike is blond and cheerful while Ivan is dark and brooding. She feels sparks with both men and wonders how she got so lucky to meet two cute guys in one night. Her friends and bandmates remind her that she hasn't been so lucky in love lately - in a word, her love life is a train wreck!
Mike and Ivan, however, are not who they appear to be, as we soon learn. Ivan is following Mike and trying to save Holly for reasons that are known only to him. Holly, unfortunately, learns the hard way - yowch! First, however, there's a charity performance of Holly's band, Canto Sybilla, where the showdown between the men occurs - where dark meets light and Holly is the casualty. Will she survive to meet either man and if so, will it be her choice?
I love how Rachel Olivier adds touches of fantasy to our everyday, mundane lives: the bottomless pocket that holds the right change for a tip - or a gorgeous silken dress! A magical blessing over a crowd that makes the night more special for everyone there...is that the real reason we have such a great time at rock concerts?
(You mean it's not the contact high?)
I often find fantasy cold and suffering from pretension. Too many characters have weird names. The dialogue is often stiff and faux Olde English, the prose overwrought and overwritten, the plot convoluted. But Rachel's stories are immensely entertaining and readable and I enjoy them as much as I enjoy stories from the best urban fantasy writers like Emma Bull, Melissa Marr and Holly Black (well, those are my favorites!).
For just a couple bucks, you too can delight in Rachel's story. Check out the link here to Drollerie Press and download a copy for yourself. And ignore the "erotica" tag. This story is pure romance.
This was a new experience for me, reading an e-novella. I don't have an e-reader so I had to download the novella to my desktop as a pdf file. Fortunately, my computer is a tiny notebook so it was quite comfortable to read while laying down. The graphic design was beautiful, the font easy-to-read and unlike a real book, it was simple to make the typeface larger or brighter as the sun faded and I had less light to read by.
