When I read the category of this month’s TBR challenge, I knew right away which book I’d read. Cheryl Sterling’s What Do You Say to a Naked Elf? has been languishing on my TBR shelf since I bought it in 2005.

Apart from her being a TV-and-movie junkie and a saleswoman extraordinaire of adult lotions, potions and playthings, plain Jane Drysdale’s life was nothing unusual. That was, until a moment of reckless driving catapulted her into a fairytale world like a J.R.R. Tolkien book on crack. From Walker, Michigan, to a place of wacko wizards, sexually repressed elves and dangerous dwarves, Jane was suddenly fulfilling an epic destiny that held certain death—and even more certain love. Even the newly legible tattoo on her shoulder seemed to proclaim the rightness of her transport: “Forever joined, heart upon heart, world upon world.” Everything started with Jane on trial for her life and her Legolas-lookalike lawyer taking his shirt off, and the first thing she needed to know was . . . What Do You Say To A Naked Elf?

Sterling is a new-to-me author, and I liked her style well enough. The story moves quickly, and the world in which the book is set is an engaging one.

But as a romance, What Do You Say to a Naked Elf? didn’t work for me for a number of reasons. Jane and Charlie (an odd name for an elf) spend a bit of time together and fall in love almost immediately. Their internal conflict feels a bit flimsy, especially when it is resolved with one conversation.

Then there are the coincidences. Paranormal romance automatically requires some suspension of belief. The seemingly endless string of coincidences here, culminating in a deus ex machina, can more accurately be described as a complete shattering of belief. For me, this made it hard to sympathize with the characters because I kept waiting to see what the next coincidence would be.

The end result is this: while I kept reading the book to see what would happen next, I felt distanced from the characters and their situation. My rating for What Do You Say to a Naked Elf? 2.5 out of 5.