I give up.I just can't take it. When your back starts to hurt because you're trying to drag your eyes across the heavy pages of a non-event insipid book like this one, it's time to call it quits. Like, forever.I don't know how many times, while I was reading this, that I ended up staring into space and only realizing that I was after ten or so minutes had passed and the book fell out of my hand. I was so uninterested in this story that I began to daydream about exponentials and I started to notice the wisps of dog hair on the hardwood floor. Nothing happens in this book. Nothing. Literally, nothing. Everybody is going around their daily lives without any kind of issue; the only one who has an actual problem is Donia, but she was so dull I started skipping chapters whenever her name appeared under the nonsensical quotation. I just don't give a shit what happens to any of the characters. Seth is a goth; so what? Aislinn sees faeries; so what? Keenan wants a Summer Queen; so the fuck what? The main plot of this book was basically just all the characters trying not to sleep with each other. It's not hard, people, and it's also not interesting to anybody who isn't there. Reading this book was like sitting at the back of the school bus while everybody talks about how they went to a party at the weekend and this person was rumored to have boned this person, but when you go and actually ask whoever it was whose name was inserted into Generic Party Event Template they tell you they either didn't go to the party or their parents were there and everyone spent the night playing checkers.It's not like the actual personalities of the characters are at all interesting, either. Aislinn has no interest in the world outside her own arse and it shows when she spends a minimal amount of time talking about normal stuff normal people talk about, but instead waxes on and on about how the fey are after her even though they never physically harm her in any way. If she's so desperate to be normal, why doesn't she actually TRY to achieve such a goal? Sorry, but if a heroine is going to appeal to me, she needs to a) not be a Mary-Sue, b) have a significantly larger emotional range than a sesame seed, c) and do something other than lie around complaining about her lot. Ever Bloom, I'm looking right at you.The writing wasn't terrible; that's pretty much what the one star covers. Of course, there was the whole 'WTF?' thrown in there that made me want to vomit into my hair, but other than that, there wasn't anything too dreadful about Mel's prose. Did I finish characterization? No?Oh, then on to Seth, and the fact that at eighteen he's had sex with so many people he actually attends a clinic and has to produce paperwork to prove he's not carrying any STDs. Seth also lives in this unrealistic fairy tale setting - in a train car (I think. I haven't read this in a while) with a snake and a bunch of tats and piercings and having wild parties every night alongside both humans and fae. Wow! Could Seth be any cooler?Oh, he could. In fact, Seth is such a wet lump of charcoal that I couldn't take this Goth image as anything other than a pose or this lame book's attempt at distancing itself from the whole dreadful floppy-haired prep situation that's been sniffing around suspiciously in the YA section of late. Give me quirky characters any day of the week, but having a character composed entirely of forced quirks and living a life that is simply unfeasible is a really good way to smack your reader about the head with a baseball bat labelled, "I'M TRYING EXTREMELY, ALMOST PERVERSELY HARD!"Remember the movie Juno? Where everybody talks and acts so unrealistically? That's what this book is like, and especially when Aislinn is around Seth. And I won't wax about their romance, because there's nothing to wax about - I just didn't care about it. Aislinn may as well have just dated herself because Seth has absolutely no personality. He doesn't speak in a certain way, has no interesting mannerisms, and really, he's just there to be a pillar to which Aislinn talks about her problems. And she talks about her problems a lot. A LOT.Okay, so...Seth?Sorry, but no. This was a total fail. Seth fits in just perfectly with the floppy-haired preps in terms of total and utter personality lackage and a terrible attempt at being limply sexy. Oh, and then there was Beira, the useless villain with no motivation. Need I even bother saying more? Beira is pointless. Yeah, okay, she says some mildly rude things (no ruder than the things I say on a daily basis) and lies around on a couch, and we're expected to cower away from her as if she's any more intimidating than the Bad Pony? No. Just no.She's pathetic. I would have laughed at her had I not been so deathly bored. I would also have laughed at Keenan, except laughing at him would require wasting brain space thinking about him, so I won't go there. Really, the less said about the whole Summer Queen and staff and Winter Girl thing the better.That's another thing about this book. It makes absolutely no sense. I had no idea what was going on, and I gave up on page 205. Not an early bow-out. I get that Keenan wanted a Summer Queen, and that something happened to his father, and Beira is somehow more powerful, and there was something to do with touching a staff amid lots of faery sex, but really, that's as far as it got. I had some vague inclination that Aislinn was THE ONE but what she was THE ONE of and where it would go if she gave in to being THE ONE was all kind of a grey area for me.So, a summary? I thank all the gods of the earth and sun that I resisted buying this utter bollocks and libraried it. I'm actually not shitting you. To spend money on this would be to punch myself in the face repeatedly until I suffered massive brain damage and was no longer able to read and therefore suffer this tripe.In short: This book blows.
This review stands for books 1, 3 and 5 in this series* I can see why people love these books -- they hit the bullseye in a target for modern YA fiction featuring classic fae lore and a combination of simultaneously relatable yet idealized teen characters and extremely cool fae. I imagine that readers the world over wish they were in this world and knew these characters. I feel the same way. But here's the problem -- I experience these books as a mere jumping off point for that desire. To be satisfied, I'd have to craft a lot of the story myself. I have probably never read an author more culpable than Marr of having essential ideas in her head that she does not manage to get down on the page. She refers to things that she clearly has no idea that she hasn't told you and that you don't know. The narrative is choppy and has massive holes in it where descriptions, conversations, and back story ought to go. Character motivations are a similar problem. I realize that it's completely reasonable to suggest that the motivations and priorities of ageless fae would not be immediately comprehensible to humans, and that to depict really intriguing and frightening fae characters, they need to be intimidating and unpredictable at times. But far too often in this series I find the fae characters' choices to be capricious or odd, and I don't believe that it's because they are Foreign and Unknowable. They just come across as random and inconsistent... or else they're all emotionally stunted and childlike, vacillating among petulance, anger, envy, and desire in an unbecoming way that makes them all ultimately the same. And far less appealing than they're meant to be in this series.If you want to read YA fantasy with faeries, you pretty much have to read these books because pickings are sadly slim and these are so quintessentially on topic. But gosh, they are frustrating. They each read like about 2/3 of the book they are trying to be.*Books 1,3, and 5 are really about the same lead characters, while 2 and 4 are about different characters and are unnecessary to follow the main plot. Personally, I liked the main arc and was indifferent, at best, to books 2 and 4.
What do You think about Wicked Lovely (2007)?
I loved reading this book so much. I felt it had a slow pace at first, but had it not, it wouldn't have had the same effect on me. I enjoyed learning about this Faerie world and how things worked in it. The writing is so beautiful, and so efficient - I never got bored or felt the urge to skim through anything. I also don't think I've ever been so satisfied with a book's ending like I was with Wicked Lovely, but I guess that is subjective.. I just can't describe the utter joy I was feeling at the
—leksie
"Wicked Lovely" is a story of Aislinn, a teenage girl who has a rare ability to see faeries. This gift/curse troubles her, mostly because the fae world is cruel and ugly. For a long time she manages to hide this ability and stay unnoticed, but suddenly she finds herself a center of fae attention. We very quickly learn that Aislinn is chosen to have a special place in the faery world...Once again a book so popular and trendy and such a favorite of many of my friends, disappointed me. But first the positives. I liked the concept of the book and the ideas behind the faery mythology Marr created. In fact, her apparent strong knowledge of fae lore and interesting idea of Summer and Winter Courts saved this book from being just a tolerable read. I enjoyed the prologue and the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. I appreciate thorough research.What didn't work for me? Definitely the writing. I found that while the sentence structure of this book was overly simplistic, the narration itself seemed too confusing for me. The sentences in the paragraphs didn't flow together. I didn't care for the 3rd person narration with 1st person thoughts (by multiple characters) thrown in together. Neither did I care for long descriptive paragraphs between lines of dialog. It made me very often go back to previous lines paragraphs before just to keep up with a conversation. I also didn't find myself emotionally connected with any of the characters. For me Aislinn seemed whiny most of the book (she did perk up in the end though), Seth appeared to be a guy who does nothing wrong and yet at 18 has so my sexual past that he has to have himself frequently tested for STDs (?), Keenan - just bland...I would not discourage anybody from reading this series. It is after all very popular. I expect you will like this book if you are a fan of fairies and find guys with tattoos and pierced lips and navels attractive. Unfortunately these things are not quite within my scope of interest and therefore this book didn't work for me. Reading challenge: #1 - W
—Tatiana
Well guys, for over a year I had a review of this. I gave this book 1 star, so to say the least, my review was not positive. But see, I got tired of constantly having to delete all the "troll-screaming" comments, so I ultimately removed the review.The reason I didn't like this book is because it was one of the first YA titles I ever read, and I was really put off by the content. That's my prerogative. I know that probably sounds like a revolutionary concept, but whatever.If you are curious about the book, I'll refer you here: http://sites.google.com/site/parental...
—Amelia, the pragmatic idealist
