Darth Pedant

I sort of remember buying this paperback years ago, but I cannot for the life of me remember why I picked it. Maybe it was a bargain table blind buy. Maybe I was feeling adventurous. Maybe I was on drugs. Maybe all three, I don’t know. Given the near-total lack of romantic bones in my body (and the specific preferences of the few romantic bones I do have), a cover inviting me to “Enter a world of faerie romance” would normally be a deterrent. But enough about present-me scratching my head over past-me’s random book buying. On to the book itself!

Yeah, seriously though, what was past-me thinking? This book is 328 pages and hardly anything happens. 90% of it is Aislinn freaking out about what the faeries want with her while her friend Seth tries ever so patiently to get out of the Friend Zone and Keenan stalks Aislinn and worries about how the world will end soon if she isn’t the Summer Queen. The other 10% is Keenan’s ex being sad and tragic and his mother, the Winter Queen, being a colossal bitch with vague motivations. This does not an engrossing novel make.

Also, I have a question. Why are YA heroines so often clueless when their parents/guardians obviously know the score? A lot of YA books do this, and sometimes adequate justification is woven into the narrative, but this? This is just bad parenting. The women in Aislinn’s family all seem to have the Sight. They can see the hidden world of the faeries and they think Very Bad Things will happen if the faeries ever figure this out, so they have a bunch of rules they follow to minimize their chances of being noticed. But apparently, in spite of this need to avoid faeries shaping and consuming her entire life, Aislinn never thought to hit the library and study faerie lore to give her an extra edge until Seth suggests it after knowing faeries are real for about five minutes. Literature on the faeries exists in the book’s world; it’s quoted at the start of every chapter, for crying out loud! Why doesn’t Aislinn’s super paranoid grandmother have her own library of faerie lore for education purposes? Knowing is half the battle, so why does Aislinn only know basic things like faeries frequently kidnap mortals and they don’t like iron? OH! Maybe there’s no G.I. JOE in Aislinn’s world. She doesn’t even know that knowing is half the battle! (Yes, I know, I’m rambling and being silly now and my inner 80’s child is jumping out. Sorry.)

And on a truly pedantic note, “fey = doomed to die” is a hill I’m willing to die on and it’s never not annoying to me when people use fey interchangeably with fae/fay. Blarg. Not even drugs and bargain book tables could make me read more of this series.