NB: Welcome to Flashback Friday! (Yes, we know it’s Saturday, but we can make our own rules!) For the holidays, we thought you’d all like to revisit this bonkers review of Blitzen’s Fated Mate. This review was originally published December 12, 2016. Happy holidays and may your celebrating being joyous!
I swear to God, Amazon is fucking with me. I mean, maybe not. To be fair, I did some Cyber Monday shopping while swigging cold medicine straight from the bottle – and I’m talking about that viscous green stuff you have to sign for, the kind where they don’t even bother to try adding flavor. Still, I can’t imagine what I was looking at that would result in Blitzen’s Fated Mate showing up under “Recommended for You!”
But it did. So of course I read all 53 pages of “WTF just happened here” so you don’t have to.
You’re welcome.
So Blitzen’s Fated Mate is about – I shit you not – a reindeer shifter who works for Santa Claus. Arian (not Adrian, Arian) is an arctic shifter who can change into a reindeer, snowy owl, arctic fox, or polar bear. He’s super excited because he’s finally been drafted into the “Blitzen position” pulling Santa’s sleigh.
Side note: Cosmo, I fully expect there to be a holiday article about sexual positions named after Santa’s reindeer. Donner involves anal.
Reindeer aren’t something I ever imagined sexualizing – let alone Santa’s reindeer – and while I now fully understand that somewhere, right this minute, someone is masturbating to that exact fantasy, I have to say I was happier in my little ignorance bubble.
So. Back to Arian. He’s really excited to finally make the reindeer team because apparently wearing a harness and pulling around an octogenarian intent on committing numerous B&E’s is very prestigious. Fortunately for us, Arian fucks it all up right away. His harness breaks (YOU HAD ONE JOB, ARIAN! ONE JOB) and he plummets from the sky.
Paranormal romance author (for real) Charli is looking out her window on Christmas Eve when she sees something fall from the sky. She goes out into the woods and finds a reindeer laying unconscious in the snow. So she touches it.
Look, I feel like now is a good time for a PSA about not touching stunned wildlife – especially not four-hundred pound deer that could kick you in the head and kill you. Just don’t touch wild animals in general, ok? Best case scenario if you do: nothing happens. Worst case scenario? You get rabies or betrothed to an arctic shifter.
Anyway, Charli touches the reindeer and he immediately transforms into a naked guy with a boner.
Now, at this point Charli does the rational thing which is to go back in her cabin, lock the doors, close the curtains, and spend the rest of the evening drinking all the brown liquor she owns.
KIDDING!
She totally drags the naked guy with the boner back to her place. Like you do. Arian wakes up and he’s all “OMG you are my fated mate! We need to be together!” and Charli goes “Okay!” and they bone.
Now, and obviously I can only speak for myself personally here, if I saw a reindeer transform into a naked guy and then he claimed we were fated to be together, I’d need some empirical evidence to support that. I realize that at times I can be skeptical and lacking in what others might call “whimsy,” but I feel like Charli should have asked some questions before putting his penis inside of her.
Questions like: why are you sometimes a deer? Are there hallucinogens in my drinking water? At the very least they need to consider the fact that Arian just fell from the sky and is likely concussed.
To be fair, Arian is trying to be sensitive to how new this must be for Charli:
“Unless you want me to go? I can woo you, if you’d like. I’ve never done it before, but I could figure it out.” He looked toward the window. “I could live in the woods and woo you.”
Her hand that was resting on his shoulder tightened. “No! I mean,” she cleared her throat as she blushed, “you don’t have to live in the woods. I don’t…”
“You can tell me anything, Charli. We’re mates.”
“I don’t know why I feel so connected to you, but I do. I don’t want you to leave or live in the woods. The wooing thing? What does it involve?”
Her blush deepened, staining her cheeks a lovely color.
“I would visit you and bring you gifts. I would show you that I can be a good mate for you.”
I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and I swear to you that “I can live in the woods and woo you and bring you gifts” eventually leads to a hiker stumbling across human skeletal remains. That is not romantic. That is terrifying. “Yes, Arian. You go out in the woods and look for a gift. Look for one real far away, okay? Keeeeep going. Yuuuup. Deeper in the woods, honey. Yes, 911? I need police sent to my house immediately.”
Anyway, Charli blithely accepts the fated mates thing, Santa and the other reindeer show up, there’s some arguing, the end. Honestly I was left with more questions than answers.
I mean, Arian can shapeshift into four animals, so which is best? The reindeer antlers would be good for line drying bras, which is helpful, but not much else. Reindeer just aren’t sexy.
I thought the snowy owl would be cool, but then I remembered that birds can’t control their sphincters, so he’d just shit all over the house. The polar bear is too big to hide and too ridiculous to explain to the neighbors. So, then I was left with arctic fox ,which sounds fucking adorable and prime for snuggles, but Carrie’s husband, who is a biologist, had to rain on my parade by telling me that foxes actually kind of stink. Apparently there’s a scent gland issue, although there’s debate on where said gland (or glands) may be, but I’m willing to bet on Arian it would be behind the ball sack.
So, what’s your take?
More fun facts about this book: all shifters are born male and the only opportunity they have to mate and have a family is if Mrs. Claus selects a female elf for them to be paired with (elves are human-sized, BTW). This is such bullshit. The idea of Mrs. Claus being involved in a shifter selective breeding program sounds like a nightmare I’d have after mixing my cold medicine with hard liquor. Mrs. Claus is a sweet old woman who bakes cookies and gets on Santa about his fucking cholesterol and that’s it. I refuse to accept any other reality.
I don’t know what to say about Blitzen’s Fated Mate other than “Well, that shit just happened.”
There are two more books in the series but if you want to find out WTF Dasher ( A | BN | K | AB ) and Prancer ( A | BN | K ) are up to, that’s on you.
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I’d have thought Donner’s specialty would be oral. Eating out – get it? God! I’m morbid this morning.
Arian is a heresy. Although, honestly, it sounds like this book had more than one heresy going on. I am so with you on the Mrs. Claus elf-mating program.
Well fuck.
Sounds like a gift that keeps on giving.
“Mrs. Claus, it was Donner’s turn! Why did you pick Arian instead?”
“Donner? Pass!”
“I could live in the woods and woo you.”
That line directly violates the Stay Sexy, Don’t Get Murdered doctrine. RUN, CHARLI, RUN!
Also, if there was a naked, unresponsive man with a boner lying in my yard, in the dead of winter, I’d think, ” rigor mortis”, not, “mmmm, I wanna hit that” !!!
i couldn’t sleep and I’m still in pain from an injury but this review made me forget all about that. I was laughing too much.
I’m so sorry, but your job is to now review every terrible romance novel Amazon recommends to you. I need this in my life. Hahaha
Thank you for taking this one for the team. I am not tempted to EVER read this book. But I loved your review.
I wanted to mention that if you want another take on Mrs Claus – google the latest M&S Christmas ad’. It gives Mrs Claus a whole other level of cool. (And might take your mind off this book for a little bit.)
Your review made me LOL at work so thank you. Especially for reading this so we don’t have to.
Oh Gosh! Where do I start? This book could be a lump of coal in your stocking or the fair weather friend who only shows up at your holiday party to get drunk.
LOL!
I had to be careful not to snort my coffee and laughed hard enough to forget my sore throat. (I, too, am swigging cold medicine – but the flavored kind!). Thank you, thank you for taking one for the team and hope you feel better soon!
Thanks for taking one for the team like that! If you are looking for a book featuring reindeer that’s actually good — a palate cleanser, if you will — I recommend T. Kingfisher’s ‘The Raven and the Reindeer.’ It’s a re-telling of the Snow Queen fairy tale. It’s… completely different in tone to what you just read, but I promise you: NO boners.
I’m giggling madly at my desk and I can’t tell anyone it’s because of the phrase “Donner involves anal.”
Brilliant review, madam.
Etiquette question: should mail addressed to him start off with “Dear Arian” or “Deer Arian”?
My first thought was the same as Francesca — Donner is oral for sure. I’m thinking that Blitzen is anal.
The whole thing is crazysauce, but that thing with Mrs Claus puts it into a whole new level of WTF????
@KateB: Hey. Get a job. Buy your own shit. Stay out of the forest.
Three rules to live by.
Don’t people realize that polar bears will eat you, and not in a good way?
I just liveblogged the sequel, Dasher’s Fated Mate, last night. It gets much creepier. Nobody (except Santa) can enter or leave North Pole City except on Christmas Eve. Everybody is outfitted with trackers (supposedly in case they get lost in a blizzard), and when Mrs Claus decides to sneak out to NYC to get chocolates for Santa, he sends the security team after her to drag her back. Unfortunately they instead end up kidnapping Merri, who is dressed as Mrs Claus for a party.
Mrs Claus has canonical mind control powers and Santa can mind wipe people. So somehow Merri ends up losing all her fear at this situation and deciding to stay with Dasher as his fated mate at the North Pole.
The book ends with her giving birth to their shifter child. Since she can’t tell her parents that she’s soulmated to a beardeerfoxowl and trapped at the North Pole, she just tells her family that she suddenly moved to a tiny remote town in Canada for work. A town they can never visit. Or send mail to. A job that keeps her so busy she’s only able to leave for a few hours once a year. And a husband she got engaged to two months after they started dating. That’s not concerning at all.
Did the author mean to give him a name that is a homophone of “Aryan”? Because, um, maybe best not to give the reader the images of Neo-Nazi types. Kind of a boner-killer. Just saying.
Your review is better than the book. Thanks for the Monday Morning laughs.
@Ninja Penguin Holeeeee shit that’s creepy
Major flaw – all of Santa’s reindeer are female. True science fact. Males lose their antlers in the fall of the year, so by Christmas Eve only the females have antlers. Which adds a whole new level of weird to this book.
WTF!!!
Wow – that’s a lot of levels of crazy.
I recently learned that only female raindeer keep their horns in winter – I would totally read about a female shape shifting Blitzen.
@cleo – reindeer. Argh
@Kim – I didn’t see your post before I wrote mine. I love science.
These F+ reviews are a bright spot in my otherwise snowy, damp, dreary day. Now I need to reach for the Clorox wipes so I can bleach out my eyeballs.
You know how the film industry always seems to release horror movies at Valentine’s Day? This is the romance industry’s Christmas horror novel. Elyse, thank you for your sacrifice and the awesome review.
@TamB, thanks for the Marks & Sparks ad! Love it!
Elyse’s reviews are the best. Just sayin’.
Thank you for the amazing review, which is much better than a lot of books that I read!!
Dying of laughter! I’m so sorry that you had to actually read the book to bring us this very fine review, but thank you, Elyse!!
I’m also trying not to spit coffee into my keyboard and NOT laugh out loud because I would hate to explain this post to my attorney boss. I knew I also had to come read the comments and as usual, the Bitchery does not disappoint.
Thanks for the LOL on an otherwise-shitty Monday morning. 🙂
Hahaha. I confess that this is in my queue, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I bought it for the LOLs when DA had it on one of their Tuesday lists several weeks ago. Guess it’s not the barrel of fun I was hoping for. 🙁 But at least I got to enjoy your review.
Has there every been a thread or blog post on the fun danger of the 99¢ or free e-book? I think this would definitely qualify. How many people have read a book description so absurd, looked over to find that it was 99¢ or free, and clicked the buy button…because you can’t help yourself. After all it’s less then a buck. The laughs alone would make it worthwhile.
A part of me is really curious as to what kinds of titles would pop-up on such a list.
Thank you Elyse for saving people from the temptation.
And apparently the author has been on the USA Today bestseller list, according to the cover. With what, I hardly dare ask.
I guess this was the next logical step after the gingerbread man smut Dear Author reviewed once.
Elyse, you are a brave, brave woman, and yet again an F+ review has made my day. I’m perfectly balanced in that place between “it’s hilarious that this exists” and “I want to scrub this from my brain forever.”
OMG I laughed so hard.
(I also noticed the thing about Aryan — eeck)
Thanks, Elyse, for taking one for the team. Thanks all, for the laughs!
– shakes head – The chance of reading a book like this are why I am boycotting contemporary holiday romances this season.
Really is it much different than Twilight? Jacob (a werewolf shifter) in love with Bella only to find out that his destined to be with Bella’s newborn daughter? Hmmmm….but I ad to enjoying werewolf and vampire trash. Those are the best. Keep the reindeer though. LOL!
Thank you for lifting my Monday spirits. This review was a delight.
The fact mentioned above that reindeer with antlers in winter are female would have made for a much more interesting book, if the shifting was also gender switching. However, them not being able to leave the North Pole without being hunted down and returned means it would be better suited to a horror series than romance.
Elyse,
If the …interesting… novels written by Chuck Tingle that you reviewed here were purchased from Amazon, you’ll want to be verry wary about what Amazon is recommending for you. Or not. Your F+ reviews are so much fun to read. Thank you!
This sounds horribly amazing…thank you so much for reviewing it!
Regarding the owl and birds controlling their sphincters – I had a parrot, and they can totally be potty trained if they’re amenable to it, which means there is some control there. Ours refused, and often waited to aim at the cats. There’s also bird diapers you can get, but I can’t see that being sexy except for very specific fetishes…
Wow. Just… wow. So who’s going to take one for the team and read what Prancer and his ~fated mate~ are up to?