Barry the Lonely Reindeer & His Bashful Elf is the fourth book in the ‘Willy the Kinky Elf’ series. The stars are, Reindeer Barry Simpson, the younger brother of Blake from Book 3, and Ricky, a shy elf. This is told in first person through Barry’s pov.



The blurb does a good job of describing what the book is about so I won’t repeat it. It’s a more serious story dealing with bad relationships, past and present. Barry, Ricky and even Santa have to deal with bad exes, and a bad Mrs. Santa. We learn more about Santa Claus, and how he, the reindeer, and the elves came to be. The information Santa gives is still mysterious, but it makes Santa more ‘real’ compared to in the previous stories. The story did have its humorous parts, but not like the previous three books. My favorite character was Ricky; he was too cute, especially when he was mad and protecting Barry.

I keep forgetting to mention in my reviews, that the author does a great job of presenting previous background about the North Pole, Santa, Reindeer and Elves, in each book without sounding repetitive. I’ve read other authors’ books where the author rehashes a previous book in the series in order to catch readers up to speed in case they didn’t read the first book. They’ll repeat for pages, sometimes chapters, until I’m bored. But not this author. She intersperses information throughout the story in a way that makes it sound different from book to book.

We get a glimpse of a new character, Dylan, who will be the main character for the fifth book.

I enjoyed Barry the Lonely Reindeer, but not as much as I did the first three books because I missed the humor that was so prevalent in the first three. Despite that, I give this story, 4 Stars. Now on to the next book!

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