Monday, November 7, 2011

Fairy Tale by Cyn Balog

Fairy Tale
Cyn Balog

Morgan, school psychic and Cam, football all-star have been together forever. So she knows immediately when he's keeping something from her. What she learns - that he's a fairy prince who must return to the Otherworld on his sixteenth birthday - shocks her. With Pip, the human Cam's fairy parents with Cam, Morgan is determined to stop Cam's departure by whatever means necessary.


While this book was unusual, I wasn't sure it actually had a point. It's not exactly that things happened for no reason; I just didn't entirely feel that the story itself had a reason. Normally books like this one will have themes of sacrifice or love or making difficult choices. The theme of Fairy Tale seemed to be something like "high school relationships are fickle." Which is true but not really something to base a story on. I'm ironically flailing around here for a way to describe the problem, but most books are about something besides the actual story, and this one just doesn't have that depth.

The story itself was okay, though some aspects seemed a little strange. Given Morgan's precognitive abilities, it came as a slight surprise that it was Cam who was the otherworldly one. Morgan's talent was never really explained or explored, which I thought could definitely have made this book more interesting. I also had trouble entirely believing Morgan's transfer of affections as quickly as it actually happened, especially if she was so attached to Cam originally. I think part of the problem may be that we never saw Cam and Morgan's relationship as it was at its best and only entered the story after Cam was already troubled by the fairy revelation. Because of the lack of foundation, I never felt like Morgan was really losing anything with Cam's departure. And I was a little shocked at how willing Morgan was to send Pip back to the (for him) misery of the fairy world.

I did enjoy Morgan's wit and Pip's awkwardness. Sometimes Morgan acted much shallower than she seemed to think she was, but that's probably typical of high school, so it wasn't unreasonable. The story was interesting enough to keep me reading, but not enough that I'd ever read it again. While it wasn't a terrible book, it could have been vastly improved and still not achieve the quality of many other YA stories.

Plot: 2 cupcakes
Characters: 3 cupcakes
Style: 2 cupcakes
Overall: 2 cupcakes

What to read instead:
Lament by Maggie Stiefvater
Tithe by Holly Black
Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

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