Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr 2007 328 Pages 3/5 So...Wicked Lovely. That's kind of how I felt about this book. On two totally opposite ends of the spectrum. There were parts of the book that I absolutely loved and couldn't tear myself away from and then there were those times where I just didn't get it and was totally frustrated with the characters and the writing and wanted to throw it across the room :/ I'll get into all that in a second though. First I'll give you a very quick synopsis about what the book is all about. Basically, the book centers around the fae world. But not happy, pretty little fairies, these are dark fairies that inhabit our own world and are invisible to the majority of us. There is a winter queen and a summer king. But the summer king is looking for his summer queen, a mortal girl, to be freed from his mother, the evil winter queen. Many mortal girls have tried to take the staff, but all have failed...and when they failed, they are doomed to become the winter girl, surrounded by cold and ice until the next girl is willing to leave her mortal life behind and take up the staff. The Summer King is Keenan and the newest girl that he has is eye on is Aislinn, a girl with "the sight", a girl who is able to see the fairies that inhabit our world. But Aislinn is not eager to take up the staff and become Fae. She's seen the evilness of many of their ways and she is in love with a mortal, Seth, a boy that she does not want to leave behind. Ok...so now I'm going to just talk about the book a little bit and about the things that bugged me. Problem number 1, and what I think my whole problem boils down to, the book was too short. And because of that, there was no development. I felt like all of the action was jumped into right away without any of the characters being fully developed. Things were left unexplained frequently and half the time I was wondering WTF is going on or WTF is this person and where did they come from? Basically, I didn't care enough about the characters. I did care about Aislinn and that's one of the reasons that I got pissed off. I felt like she was developed more than any of the other characters and I thought she was this wonderful, strong female lead at the beginning of the book...and then Marr turned her into this whimpering helpless girl and I thought WHY?? WHY DID YOU DO THAT??? Why can a female character never remain a strong female character in literature these days??? I just don't get it! I mean, Aislinn comes back and becomes a strong character again, but then she goes back to being whiny and weak again. It's like this back and forth game. I wish authors would realize that a character can go back in forth in their DECISION MAKING without going back and forth in their CHARACTER. There's a big difference there. I think Marr got this book right when she went into the fae world. I was totally captivated by that and got lost in the fairy scenes where the magic and the fantasy took over. The first scene in the book that honestly took me away was about 200 pages in when Aislinn goes to the Faire. That is until Keenan gave her the date rape drug...uh, I mean the summer wine....And then all of a sudden she was in love with Keenan and even though she kind of falls out of love with him, this is where things turn and she begins to consider becoming the summer queen...basically her decision making that affects the rest of her life starts because she was given a date rape drug....awesome....not. And then there were the things that were just oh so convenient all the time. There were many of those things, but here's my favorite: Fairies are weak to iron. Aislinn feels most safe when she's with the boy that she loves, Seth. Guess where Seth happens to live? In a frickin train. Really? That's convenient. Ok...so even though I bashed this book completely in this review and am now being disowned by so so many people ( :( ) I have to admit something...overall, it entertained me. And I'll probably read the rest of the books. Well, basically, I can promise you that I'll at least read the next book. I just hope that it gets better and not so contrived. I did like the ending of this one...I'll give Marr that. Now you may throw tomatoes at me :/