WICKED LOVELY by Melissa Marr

Just finished this one up this afternoon. Next on the agenda? Hmm. Not sure. I do have a book on the TBR pile that looks rather interesting. A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY by Libba Bray. It's another YA, and I believe it may be about witchcraft. Don't hold me to that, it's been a while since I bought it. (g) And of course there are a gazillion others. I'll have to wait and see what strikes my fancy the next time I have time to read. It may be STRAY by Rachel Vincent. The opening page has me intrigued. (g)

Anywho, on with the review...

Brief Synopsis: Aislinn has a big problem -- she can see Faeries. All of her life, she's been able to hide the fact. However, when Keenan, the Summer King, declares that she is his queen, her secret is threatened. Now she must make the choice between accepting her fate, or refusing, which could mean her death. Oh, and there's a mortal love interest tying her to this world. What to do? (g)

Blah, I really suck at these things. (g) They sound like bad cover copy. LOL. Oh well.

Anywho, my thoughts...

By far my favorite thing about this book was Aislinn's relationship with Seth, her mortal love interest. It was very sweet, and very real. I was cheering them on the entire time. LOL. I'm such a sap for a little romance -- as long as it's not too sickly sweet.

I don't know if it's me, but I found the world building in this book to be rather confusing. I kept thinking there MUST be a "Faeries for Dummies" book out there, and that I missed the prerequisite reading. I'll give Marr this -- she didn't bog down her book with a lot of backstory. That said, a few more hints on how her world works would've been helpful. But this IS the first book like this I've ever read, so perhaps it's me. At any rate, an author can't expect everyone to know a lot about their world -- so a roadmap would've been nice. Like I said, could've been me. But I was scratching my head a lot during this reading, and that doesn't usually happen.

The writing overall was pretty good, though it tended to be a bit uneven in spots. There were times when I could picture everything in the scene -- vividly. At other times, I was left with a complete blank. Those voids jerked me out of the action. That would lead me to scanning the page for some sort of description so I could see the people or surroundings. Sometimes it just wasn't there. I found that rather odd, because of the forementioned vividness.

While I enjoyed this book for the most part, it didn't grip me. For me, the tension never really boiled over to that point I was rushing forward to see what happened next. Case in point is a scene where one of the characters is attacked by a group of men. It was over before the terror filled me, and left me thinking..okay, what was the point of that? Then I realized that it was most likely a tool to get from point A to point B -- filler, in other words. But by the reaction of the characters it was _supposed_ to be gripping. But yeah, it wasn't for me -- at all.

And unfortunately, this carried over into the final climax. For me, it read a bit stilted and well, not once did I have that little jolt of fear in my belly. I was really surprised by this because the book, for the most part, read very smoothly. The ending was rushed and play-by-play. I felt very distanced, and didn't have the emotional response that I wanted to have.

Without giving too much away, I don't feel the stakes were high enough in this book. (Am I channeling D.A. or what?) The reason I say this is that in the end, the MC didn't _really_ have a choice to make -- and everything resolved a little too smoothly for her. I would've liked to see a bit more tension/conflict.

Gah, talk about a downer, huh? Let me point out some positive things:

- Despite not really understanding everything about the world, it still kept me turning the pages. Her MC was great -- a very thoughtful young woman, who clearly had her head on straight.

- She handled sex well. Although, I have to add a caveat here. She didn't show anything, which was fine... but I found that the premise of oral sex NOT being real sex, well...odd. LOL. Maybe it's a generational thing. (Oh God, am I out of the younger generation finally? Gak. (g))

- Her ending was unconventional, and kudos to her for being original.

In the end, you should probably ignore this review. LOL. It may be a genre thing that I'm just not getting.

Buy or Rent? Rent (I hate saying that. To be fair, I just finished HP and the Deathly Hallows...)