Review: The Faerie Guardian by Rachel Morgan

The Faerie Guardian (Creepy Hollow, #1)
by Rachel Morgan

Genre: Fantasy/Fae

Reading Grade: Young Adult

Publication Date: November 5, 2012

Source: Kindle store

Age Rating: 13+

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Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until a cute human boy who can somehow see through her faerie glamour follows her into the fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.

The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the fae realm. Easy, right? Not when you factor in evil faeries, long-lost family members, and inconvenient feelings of the romantic kind. Vi is about to find herself tangled up in a dangerous plot—and it’ll take all her training to get out alive.

My Review

 

Did I find a super awesome YA read with amazing characters and believable romance? And romantic tension? Lots of romantic tension? Did I? Oh, yes... Yes, I did.

This is one of my new favorites going on my “epic” shelf! Sweet babies, I adored this thing. Violet, the protag, is a very strong and snarky faerie—truly funny, and not just occasionally so. She's a tough chick and even a bit of a tomboy to boot, which makes her physical prowess that much more believable. And, she's a teenage girl with so little experience with boys, so she does allow herself to get involved with the human boy, Nate. But, she is not dreaming of their wedding day, nor thinking the fate gods had anything to do with their meeting each other.

She's a Guardian-in-training who goes out and protects people and fae folk from evil stuff that has the tendency to wreak havoc on innocent people's lives. She has a really sassy guy rival in her Guild named Ryn, an old friend-turned-enemy. A frenemy. He's just yummy and fun. I love characters like that!

Then, there's Nate who is really funny, too, and I don't know how I feel about him after having read the entire story, plus the bonus stories. He's just a complex character, I suppose, like any real person, so I'm left perplexed and wanting to know why he chooses to go down the path he does in the story SO badly. Why did you do it? Why, Nate?

Back to Ryn—delicious Ryn. Where you have an instant attraction between Violet and Nate, leading to a very immediate relationship worthy of high-schoolers, you have something far slower-burning with Vi and Ryn. They hate each other, but do they really? It feels like that kind of relationship where the two get off on making each other angry. Ryn certainly derives actual pleasure from doing so with Vi, as I learned from reading his POV story at the end. The potential for future romance between the two is seething through the words on the page and I cannot wait to read more about them. I totally ship it!

I think what makes this story work is that it goes deep and does it right away in Book 1. We find out why Violet has literally NO friends and why she and Ryn had a falling out. She starts out not having a clue as to why he hates her, but he fesses up and it really allows for the kind of character insight missing in a whole lot of novels I read, YA and adult. Because I can understand what makes these characters tick, I relate to them better and can now get hooked into their emotions, just like how they get hooked into each other, emotionally, after their big blow-up. It's something usually saved for a Book 2 or Book 3, but, seriously, why wait to put in the good stuff? This is why readers read!

My score: 5/5 stars. (Easily.)