This was a delightfully working class holiday novella. And not in that ‘the MMC owns a railroad company, why the heck are we calling this a working class trope when he’s a fat-cat bourgeois industrialist??’ way.

This was a real working class trope—maybe the first histrom one I’ve even read. Our heroine found herself running her late father’s very small-scale horse tram in Wales. And our hero was one of the drivers—a soft horseboi with a kind voice and long fingers.

This hero satisfied a very specific childhood crush of mine: David Thewlis (the actor who played Professor Lupin) in the 1994 Black Beauty movie. If you know what I’m talking about, we just became best friends.

It was lovely! Very sweet. Very low-angst. The mutual pining was heartwarming. I only wish we’d had more on-page falling.