Elysa Hendricks, $0.99
Fantasy Romance, 2013
Lucky O’Roarke is anything but lucky. The poor guy took out a huge loan to buy off his grandfather’s share of the family pub as well as to renovate the place, only to realize that his girlfriend and his account had been canoodling behind his back and robbing him blind. Now, he’s hopelessly broke and he is resigned to losing the place after St Patrick’s Day. Oh well, let’s focus on the present, and right now he needs help around the place.
Then Diamond Tautha walks in and pretty much gives herself a job at his place. She’s actually a leprechaun. He can’t remember it at that moment, but he and she met when he was a kid, and his grandfather found them together—not in that way, eeuw—and because of that, Diamond is bound to Lucky until she grants him three wishes. She has already granted two (for him to become a great chef, and for his grandfather to recover from a heart attack), and now, after granting what is certainly a wish to save the pub, she’d be free to become a leprechaun and do leprechaun things again.
Only, he decides that he loves her when he barely even knows her, wishes for something that allows him to get the girlfriend, and a deus ex machina lands on his lap to allow him to also save his pub. The end.
Oh, there are so many ways Lucky’s Leprechaun could have worked. Have Lucky remember Diamond all this while, perhaps, and have the author give him such a hard and battered life that he loves her desperately as one of the very few bright moments in a bleak life. Or, maybe, have him know Diamond over a longer period of time, and in the end have him choose his heart over the pub—let him be willing to and actually lose something to make this love more precious. I don’t know, just make the happy ending something to be earned, something that is hard won but worth the effort.
Instead, the romance here is glib and flippant. The hero just makes a wish and everything, including love and money, falls onto his lap. Love is like a cheap trinket one walks into a store and plonks down $0.99 for. Where is the emotional resonance, the poignancy, the feels? By making everything in this story go so smoothly and way too conveniently for everyone involved, this one exists to make some pocket change for the author and waste the time of everyone else.
