by Rachel Morgan
Genre: Fantasy/Fae
Reading Grade: Young
Adult
Publication Date:
November 5, 2012
Source: Kindle store
Age Rating: 13+
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.
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.)