Wicked Lovely - Book Beach Bunny

Wicked Lovely

Author: Melissa Marr

Genre: YA/Fantasy

Grade: D

Ash has learnt since childhood to ignore the fairies that she sees everywhere. She’s been taught by her grandmother to keep herself safe and out of their way and if they know she can see them well, that’s trouble.

So you’d think a girl with that kind of training would know what anyone whose read a book about fairies knows- don’t want to accept drinks from them! But oh well, the Summer King is looking for a wife to break a centuries long curse his mother put on him and I needed a fairy themed book for the reading challenge I noted a couple of weeks ago.

Overall this book had a lot of problems for me:

1. The writing. It just sounded so off, so false and in a couple of cases downright repetitive. Ash’s thoughts on Seth after the first seventeen times made me want to put my head into a wall.

2. Seth himself. It wasn’t that I hated him and I do recognize the fairy tale aspects of this book and that he was basically supposed to be Prince Charming. Maybe I’m a cynic I’ll admit that but this guy was so over the top perfect that he makes Prince Charming look like Lord Voldermort.

3. The Villain: Beira. I’m sorry all I could picture was an evil Disney Queen. Animated no less! She’s never really explained and that’s fine I don’t think the baddie always needs to have depth but it helps. It helps a lot. Plus all her threats and her jokes were just so over the top yet they all fell flat to me.

And then the biggest problem of them all:

4. Ash. The main character. The super special snowflake who never actually does anything until she absolutely has to. There was one scene in the book that pretty much sums up my feelings for Ash. She’s talking with Seth and the Summer King Keenan and the whole time they’re talking it’s being described as Seth running his hands through her hair (petting her) then she moves things aside so she can curl up in his lap. I was already pretty down on her at that point but then I just got this picture in my head of a dog being fought over my two owners and that was the last straw for Ash (and Seth) for me.

This book had one saving grace for me in Donia. Though she was also a bit of a repetitive mooning over the boy character that let me down in the end. I would have liked to see more of her story and her past. I think that would have been an immense relief from Ash.

Recommend: Negative. Sorry, I just couldn’t with this one. But at least I crossed off another square on the game board.