A surprising Faerie story

Hey guys!

I just finished reading Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr, and I have to say, I liked it a lot better than I thought I would.

This book, as many of you may already know, is about faeries. Not the faith, trust, and pixie dust kind, but the mischievous and invisible to the eye kind of faerie. Invisible to all except Aislinn and her family, that is. Aislinn was born with the Sight that her mother and grandmother were born with. Aislinn's mother is dead for undisclosed reasons, her father is out of the picture, and Aislinn lives with her overprotective grandmother who is constantly warning Aislinn not to attract the attention of faeries. Well, guess what happens.

Aislinn attracts the attention of not just any faerie, but of Keenan, the Summer King! He notices Aislinn, and he knows with the fiber of his being that she is the one who was always destined to become his Summer Queen.

Before I go any further, let me explain a little about the faerie monarchs. There are four courts: Summer, Winter, Dark, and High. This book in the series focuses on just the Summer and Winter courts. Before Keenan was born, the Summer Court was ruled by his father, and the Winter Court by his mother, Beira. That is until Beira murders the Summer King and binds Keenan's powers so that she holds sway over him until he finds his Summer Queen.

And how does he know when he's found his Summer Queen? Well, first he courts a mortal. From that point on, she cannot back out of the game. Whichever scenario plays out, she will become a faerie. After the initial courting she is given a choice: to become a Summer Girl or to take up the Winter Queen's staff. The former means that the girl does not love Keenan enough to risk everything and instead wants no power, no responsibilities, and endless fun. A Summer Girl is basically synonymous with an Emperor's concubine. The latter is the test to determine if the mortal being courted is the destined Summer Queen. To take up the Winter Queen's staff means risking the Winter Queen's cold out of her love for Keenan. If she passes the test, she becomes the Summer Queen and rules with Keenan, whose powers will be unbound. If she fails, she becomes the Winter Girl, tormented by the perpetual cold until another mortal girl takes up the Winter Queen's staff. Donia was the last girl who loved Keenan enough to take up the staff, and she became the Winter Girl. Now it's Aislinn's turn.

But Aislinn is not as willing as past mortal girls. She was raised to distrust and despise faeries and wants no part of what Keenan has done to her. She knows what sort of seductive tricks the faeries can play on mortal girls and she wants nothing to do with him. That's because she's in love with her best friend, Seth. Sexy and no stranger to girls, Aislinn is reluctant to break out of the friend-zone with him because she does not want to wreck their friendship by having what he may view as a casual fling.

Will Aislinn see that immortality is inevitable for her? Will she fall for Keenan? Will she risk a relationship with Seth? Will she take up the Winter Queen's staff? Is she the Summer Queen? Thus, the plot thickens.

When I first picked up the book, I thought it would be just like every other popular book written about supernatural beings: girl meets totally hot but kind of strange boy, girl learns that boy is immortal, girl suddenly wants boy, girl dates boy, girl becomes immortal. Same story every time. And then there's also the "other boy" who has either friend-zoned or is friend-zoned by the girl and who never gets the girl. You all know who I'm talking about.

But the further I got into this book, the more I began to realize how different it is. Okay, this book is basically set up the same way: girl meets weird but hot boy, girl has an equally hot best friend who could be more, supernatural boy pursues girl, yadda yadda yadda. But the ending is so different and infinitely better than the cliched ending of every single popular novel ever written about supernatural beings.

The ending is so different because it is every single shade of gray you could imagine. It is not all black and white. And you know what I mean about black and white: mortality vs. immortality, vampire vs. werewolf, Team This Guy vs. Team Other Guy. You get it. But this story has none of that. I'll try not to give away the ending, but Aislinn learns that there is a way to be immortal while maintaining her mortal life, that there is a way to accept her destiny and still be with the one she loves. And how does she do that? By asserting herself. Power to the female. I just adore Aislinn as a character because she is so different from the ditsy heroine that we, as a culture, have come to know and love.

Anyway, in case you haven't already figured it out, I highly recommend this book, especially if you're sick of the typical popular heroine figure.

Okay, so definitely check out this book. Leave a comment if you enjoyed this review or if there's a book out there that you'd like me to read and review. Follow my blog if you'd like to be the first to read more. And even if you don't feel like posting it, try out the writing exercise I posted the other day on your own. I f you'd like me to keep posting those, leave a comment and I'll be sure to keep those up. I just started reading The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, so I will be posting a review for that and while I'm reading that book, I will be posting reviews for other books I've already read.

Happy reading!