Josephine recommended this during their interview for our end of year podcast episodes, and I immediately borrowed it, and I later mentioned it in my New York Times round up of 2024 holiday books.
The cover copy gives an excellent summary, better than I could do:
All Cora wants for Yule is a few more shells for her collection, a cozy book by the fire, and t̶o̶ b̶e̶ s̶p̶o̶i̶l̶e̶d̶ b̶y̶ a̶ m̶i̶n̶o̶t̶a̶u̶r̶ to avoid the Yuletide Ball.
Nymphs are supposed to be fun and flirty, but Cora has always been shy, bookish, and serious. If only Asterion, the minotaur of her dreams, would set his cap at someone else before she can disappoint him—like everyone else who has discovered her proclivity toward speeches on the differences between clams and mussels.
Just when it seems she’s successfully dissuaded him, on the eve of her loneliest holiday yet, she comes across a package on her doorstep, detailing Asterion’s plan to woo her:
Three gifts, one night, one chance to prove he really sees her.
This short novella is extremely sweet, and gave me a few chest tingles when the yearning was palpable. Asterion has it bad bad. Cora is unsure of herself with other people, but knows herself very well, and is frustrated by how captivated she is by Asterion.
I found it fascinating that while there’s some big revolution or something going on in the background, for the individuals in the story, the focus was on getting along with all the different folks moving into town, and getting through their day to day lives. Plus, everyone is trying to figure out how to interact with people from different cultures with different traditions, so the baseline intention is kindness – a nice antidote to the vague menace of Something Bad going on elsewhere.
The most specific example of this kindness is Asterion. Asterion is a diplomat, but he’s young, and he knows he isn’t experienced in other culture’s holiday traditions or even daily routines and habits. And he’s also harboring a massive crush and some major horn for Cora, who is a mountain nymph and the head librarian, very dedicated to the rules and care of her library.
Cora is unsure of herself romantically because of past history with suitors who were only interested in a fling – and since she’s a nymph, that’s allegedly part of her nature. Cora is also hyper focused on shells, especially mollusks, and finds that when she reveals the part of her that’s super into shells and mollusks, and wants to share lots of details about them, people get bored or turned off, and leave. So she hides a lot of herself, especially her interests and passions.
She also, lucky thing, lives in the library. She can’t leave the mountain, because she’s born from it, but she lives in her favorite place.
Asterion knows his lack of understanding is a disadvantage to this courtship, so Asterion studies books, and Asterion studies Cora. He tries to reconcile his cultures and customs, nymph cultures and customs, and, most importantly, how he and Cora adhere to or diverge from those expectations. He’s a nerd courting another nerd and I think that was my favorite part: the care, deliberate and well-researched, that he showed in all his actions toward Cora.
There were a few elements that pulled me out of the story. For one thing, a lot of the dialogue used exclamation points! Back and forth! Emphatic or shouting or just really important! Everything is not an exclamation point! It was like reading a caffeinated influencer caption! On Instagram! Except there weren’t any emojis! Thank God!
The high number of exclamation points became visually and narratively tiresome. Stilted, cumbersome, and awkward dialogue is one of my biggest pet peeves, and it’s a credit to the characters and the plot that I persevered through all! the ! exclamation ! points! because I was so charmed by Asterion and eager to read what he would do next. It was very weird and unusual for me to want to skim dialogue because usually I’m looking for dialogue and skimming the rest.
Goodness! There were a lot of exclamation points!
There were also some grammatical errors, which bummed me out, and a rapid switch to dirty talk which, thankfully, didn’t have too many exclamation points but did change abruptly. I’m always a little disconcerted when a character who has up to that point been chill, kind, and at times a little formal, suddenly starts talking about pussy. The transition was startling to me, but may not be for others – it may be that my mental image and expectations for the character weren’t accurate.
I want to note that this book has footnotes. It’s a sort of scientific accounting of their courtship, so if footnotes bother you, and weird narration does too, you might not like this.
However, look at the cute images that start each chapter:
How retro and adorable is that?
I found A Minotaur’s Tale to be a perfect before bed read. It was quick and sweet with two characters who are into one another but face mundane obstacles, like a painful past history with relationships, assumptions about them based on what species they are and not who they are as individuals, cross cultural missteps, and, of course being really, really, REALLY busy. Some quirks of the dialogue and the style may have tripped me up, but after I finished it, any irritation I felt was smoothed over by the overall charm and adorableness of the story.
I’m extremely glad that Josephine recommended it.
