A Fairy Tale

I'm not a huge fan of fantasy stories involving the Fae, so I don't often check out books where they play a large role. But when my niece recommended A Fairy Tale by Shanna Swendson I couldn't resist giving it a try. And I'm glad I did. It's very entertaining. The two main characters, Sophie and Emily, are both spunky and smart. It reads fast. And it's fun. I actually ended up liking it a lot. It begins with Emily getting abducted by the Fae; her sister, Sophie, knows she must once again enter their Realm in order to rescue her. But Sophie has another role to play in Faerie...one she doesn't even know about. Yet.

Here are a few snippets to give you a taste of this fairy tale:

"According to Sophie's fairy indoctrination, time did funny things in fairyland. Emily could spend what felt like months here and return to the real world at the moment she left it, or she could spend what felt like minutes, only to return to the real world and find that a century had passed. Needless to say, she preferred the former option. It would be less detrimental to her career."

"If they'd told her they'd make her the greatest dancer ever in exchange for her sister, Sophie would never have agreed to the bargain. But she'd assumed she'd be the one to pay the price. ...She should have known. In all the stories, it was someone else who was taken as payment for a favor--a first-born child, a beloved daughter, a lover, a sister. ...Then again, there was always a loophole, a way to redeem the one who'd been taken or to sidestep the bargain entirely. She just had to find the loophole."

And then there's my favorite Fae, Eamon, who likes books and chocolate chip cookies:

"His silver hair gave him a shimmering halo. Although his face looked young, his eyes were ancient. They were the color of the mercury in old thermometers, a quicksilver color that shifted with light and motion. They were the most bewitching eyes she'd ever seen, and she felt as if she could have stared into them for hours--until she reminded herself that mercury was poisonous."

Happy Reading!

Foxglove Summer

"The news cycle reset at the top of the hour and I learned that the tiny village of Rushpool in sleepy rural Herefordshire was the center of a massive police search operation for two eleven-year-old girls, best friends, Nicole Lacey and Hannah Marstowe, who had been missing for over forty-eight hours. Neighbors were said to be shocked and time was running out."

SUMMARY:  Peter Grant, police constable and apprentice wizard, is sent to Rushpool from London to see if there's a magical connection to these disappearances. What he finds is traces of vestigia and a few other clues that point him toward the fae. It's not what he was hoping for, because the land of the fae is tricky to navigate. Luckily, his river goddess girlfriend comes to help him try to find the girls and bring them back.

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch is a fun investigative mystery, although I was expecting there to be a lot more magic than there was. Still, it does have an invisible unicorn in it. And Peter is a great character. I liked his girlfriend, Beverley Brook, too. I just wish I'd read the previous four books in this series before this one so I understood the many references to past characters better. But the mystery itself needed no extra clarification. (Although it could have moved at a slightly faster pace and had a touch more suspense in it.) Still, I'll definitely be reading the other books in this series. In order this time!

Happy Reading!

Urban Fantasy Fun...

Title & Author:  Lost Soul by Adam Wright
Setting:  Dearmont, Maine

How it starts:  "There are some days when everything goes okay, or at least as well as you could hope. Then there are other days when it would be better to stay in bed and let the hours drift by while you remain hidden under the blankets. Today had hardly even started but I already longed to crawl back into bed and pretend the sun had never risen.

The story:  Alec Harbinger is a preternatural investigator whose employer, the Society of Shadows, has just shipped him off to a small town in Maine. He's not excited. To make matters worse, the Society has someone spying on him, and two ogre assassins just attacked him on his first day on the job. Looks like Dearmont isn't such a sleepy town after all.

My thoughts:  This is one of the books I recently purchased online and now I wish I'd bought the next two books in the series at the same time because I loved this one! Alec is funny. I liked his assistant, Felicity, and his friend, Mallory. His supernatural cases are interesting. There's magic and mystery, witches (who run a bookstore) and werewolves, a run in with two changlings, spells and a magical sword, and suspense, too. Which makes this urban fantasy a very fun read.

Happy Reading!

Fourth book in a favorite series...

Title & Author:  The Dire King by William Ritter
First lines:  To say that the house at 926 Augur Lane was not yet back to normal would be to grossly misrepresent the nature of the house at 926 Augur Lane. At its best, the peculiar property was an abode of the abnormal and a sanctuary for the strange.

My thoughts:  This latest book in the Jackaby series picks up where Ghostly Echoes leaves off. Jackaby and Abigail Rook are once again facing off against the forces of evil in order to prevent an all-out war between the fae and mankind; as always, Jenny the Ghost and Charlie Cane, police detective and shapeshifter extraordinaire are there fighting alongside them. They are ALL such great characters; I really love them. And this book? The Dire King is another fun supernatural adventure full of magical creatures of every kind--I especially liked the one known as the twain. And there's a twist at the end I wasn't expecting! Just be sure to read the other books in this series first, or nothing is going to make sense. And the others are definitely worth reading!

The other books in the series:
     #1 - Jackaby
     #2 - Beastly Bones
     #3 - Ghostly Echoes

So check them out!

And....happy reading!