(courtesy Harper Collins Publishers)
Life crises, especially those of a more existential variety, are never a loot of fun.
All of the things you once took as gospel, the certainties you could count on in a world not exactly sporting them in profusion, are suddenly well and truly up in the air, and not knowing which way is up, you often go back to the things you do know.
Like your hometown.
Which is precisely what serious actor aspirant Cameron does in Finding My Elf by David Valdes after his first semester at NYU doesn’t go exactly as envisaged and all his aspirations to become a SERIOUS actor have gone out the window.
Well, to be fair, he doesn’t know that for sure; he just assumes that because his classes didn’t go the way he thought, that he must surely have failed and that with his scholarship thus in peril – it depends on a certain grade point average and he’s fairly sure he hasn’t met that – he has no choice but to work out what to do next.
He’s not happy about it – he assumed after years of successful stints in high school musical and plays in his hometown in Massachusetts, that he had a lock on his future and his big fish in a small pond status there would automatically translate to instant success in the unforgiving but glamourous wilds of New York City.
But that’s not what happened, and so with his assumptions well and truly shattered, he heads home to his living single dad hoping to work out where to go next.
He [Cameron’s dad] looks relieved. He leans towards me. ‘Would you believe I actually thought of them last Christmas? But you hadn’t gotten your acceptance yet, so I held off. I’ve been waiting all year!’
Somewhere, there is a cruel-spirited god just laughing at me. I silently curse him or her or them but bury my discomfort. ‘God, Dad, you really are amazing.’
Tonight isn’t the night to reveal that I am not.
He’s nervous about telling is dad about how badly his dreams have translated into reality.
His dad has worked two jobs for years, scraping everything he can pull together to give his now eighteen-year-old son the life he wants him to have, and while he’s not on the line for the costs of college, he’s very invested in Cameron’s future, as any parent would be, and Cameron dreads how hurt his dad will be to find his son has stuffed it all up.
So, and this is NOT a genius idea so do not even think of copying it, he lies to his dad, telling him all the good stuff and none of the bad stuff, confident he can figure something out before things get too out of hand.
Reader – he does not.
While he works out what to say, Cameron takes a job as, of all things, a Christmas elf at a newly-built local mall, a fairly straightforward job he thinks that simply involves chatting to excited kids and weary parents and keeping the whole Santa show on the road.
But what starts out as just a simple holiday gig becomes something else entirely when it emerges that that five elves are in a full-on viral voting extravaganza for the best elf, known as Elfmas, one that comes with a fairly hefty grand prize of $5000, which all of the elves need in one way or another.
(courtesy official author site)
Cameron needs it to pay for at least another semester of college while his handsome Marco, with whom Cameron has major attraction sparks even during the butting heads part of their meet-cute, wants it to make life for him and his widowed mum just that little bit easier.
In the middle of this festive social media storm, where each elf has a set name and personality and where daily challenges such as baking Christmassy treats and wrapping presents aims to eliminate the five elves one by one until a winner is left, Cameron and Marco begin to draw closer and closer, all while Cameron’s ex Leroy, who’s, yes, a bit of self-involved douche, is muddying the waters.
Full of Christmas everything and a huge amount of seriously handled existential angst, Finding My Elf is a brilliantly well-written light and bright yet emotionally thoughtful festive YA romcom, with sparklingly witty dialogue, an envelope-pushing in terms of believability (but in all the best romcom ways), fun characters and some real emotional stakes that ensure for all its quirky merriment that you’re invested in who ends up where.
It’s obvious, this being a reasonably classic romcom that Cameron and Marco are destined for each other but Valdes has a lot of fun getting to that point, eschewing the usual big second or early third act bust-up in favour of two people who really like each other finding away through some very challenging, social media-complicated circumstances.
A mere two weeks ago, I thought I had actually failed my classes. I thought Sarah Xu saw me as a talentless bumpkin. I didn’t know that the Shops at Vision Landing were open or that I would work there in any capacity, much less as an elf. More than that, I didn’t have a boyfriend I adore. But here I am. Life is a trip: you just can’t see what you can’t see until it materializes [sic] in front of your eyes.
The novel is actually really sweet, with the emphasis on found families, new love and finding out who you are all over again when your ideas of who you thought you were don’t quite pan out.
Turns out that things are quite as dire as Cameron imagined but the net result is the same – he has to reassess who he is, what he wants and, most importantly in this delightfully festive romcom, who it is he wants to be with as he figures out the rest of his life.
A life that is crying out for Cameron to find out who his people are, something that Marco, and surprising the other elves with which he is ostensibly competing, help him to discover even as they and his dad and favourite high school teacher and bestie all coalesce into a lovely found family that makes all that figuring out a lot easier and more lovingly supported than Cameron expected.
Christmas romcoms are by and large bright and frothy and fun, and Finding My Elf is no different, but it has a real emotional heft to it too, which takes it into the upper tier of this genre of storytelling, giving the love queer story you want but also a whole lot more besides as it acknowledges and lives out the fact that life isn’t easy and the pitfalls can be many, but that if you have your heart open, you will find your sense of self, your people and your purpose and life will become something very special indeed, not just at Christmas but right throughout a wholly changed new year.