WICKED LOVELY by Melissa Marr

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Genre: YA/Fiction/Fantasy

Plot: Rule #3: Don’t stare at invisible faeries.

Aislinn has always seen faeries. Powerful and dangerous, they walk hidden in mortal world. Aislinn fears their cruelty—especially if they learn of her Sight—and wishes she were as blind to their presence as other teens.

Rule #2: Don’t speak to invisible faeries.

Now faeries are stalking her. One of them, Keenan, who is equal parts terrifying and alluring, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer.

Rule #1: Don’t ever attract their attention.

But it’s too late. Keenan is the Summer King who has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost—regardless of her plans or desires.

Suddenly none of the rules that have kept Aislinn safe are working anymore, and everything is on the line: her freedom; her best friend, Seth; her life; everything.

Faerie intrigue, mortal love, and the clash of ancient rules and modern expectations swirl together in Melissa Marr’s stunning 21^st century faery tale.

Opinion: We might as well start out this wondrous review with me being completely honest…I totally picked up this series because of the covers. I mean come on, look at them…they’re GORGEOUS!

 

 

 

 

 

I know my mother taught me to never judge a book by its cover, but I think we can all agree that I could be doing worse things than buying a few books just because they look pretty. I’m a sucker for a cover I can get lost in, especially if the genre it falls into is Fantasy. *Sigh*…if only I lived in book world.

Aislinn has had a tough life growing up, mostly because she can see faerie creatures that nobody else can see. Well everyone besides her grandmother and her deceased mother. But the faeries that Aislinn sees on a daily basis aren’t the faeries that we all grew up visualizing, these faeries are terrible and mischievous creatures that love nothing more than to be cruel to each other and to humans. As Aislinn is forced to watch the faeries torment the unsuspecting humans around her, she also has the burden of pretending like she can’t see them at all. The risk of the faeries finding out that Aislinn has “the sight” is too great, and it can only lead to her death. But soon Aislinns’ efforts to stay hidden from the mythical world she sees starts to crumble when Keenan, the faerie Summer King, takes notice in her. For centuries the faeries have been trapped in cold by the Winter Queen, and Keenan has sought out his Summer Queen high and low in order to keep their world from becoming covered in ice. As Keenan makes himself visible to the humans in order to get to Aislinn, the perfectly careful world that Aislinn had created for herself starts to wither. She finds out that Keenan believes that she is the Summer Queen, but Aislinn wants nothing to do with the faeries. Not only is Aislinn afraid to live amongst the creatures she fought so hard to hide from all her life; but Keenan and Donia (the current Winter girl) explain that if the test does not work on Aislinn and she is not the Summer Queen, then she will be engulfed in frost and become the new Winter girl until the next girl comes along. Now Aislinn must decide if she can fight off the pull towards Keenan and resist the faeries, or if this is the path she is supposed to take.

This first installment in the Wicked Lovely Series really drew me in and got me hooked QUICK! I fall in love quickly with YA/Fantasy stories, but sometimes it can be hard to keep me enthralled since I have read so many of them. The author, Melissa Marr, did just that. Her style of writing for Wicked Lovely was amazing and incredibly descriptive. She completely touched my senses and it felt like she was literally drawing the world in my head with her words, it was fantastic! For some reason there aren’t a lot of Fantasy style books that really hit the nail on the descriptive factor for me, which is surprisingly considering what genre it is. I really felt as if I was walking with Aislinn down the street while these faeries were following her and doing terrible things to people around her. I could sympathize with her and understand her fears for these creatures that she tried so hard to ignore.

I think a great thing about this series is that the author decided to make the faeries mischievous and on the border of plain evil, rather than those happy little creatures we see when we think of them. It gave the idea of faeries a completely different outlook and really stretched the mythical plain for me. The dynamics of the characters are also really interesting and a tad out of the box. Aislinn proves to be a strong character right away because she shows the reader how much she has to go through on a daily basis just to look sane to everyone around her. Keenan, the Summer King, seems like a ruthless character with an egotistical problem. I was pleased to see our female lead push him away so many times and fight him off. What makes this story a bit more interesting is the character of Seth. Seth lives in an iron train car on his own, which proves to be very beneficial to Aislinn as an escape because faeries don’t like iron. Seth is a protective character for Aislinn, and a male in her life that she is attracted to but hasn’t made it known. Obviously the whole “love triangle” think starts to come into play, but the author makes a twist of it once the book is over. Trust me, it’s not a regular love triangle, so don’t let it turn you away from this series if that isn’t your sort of thing.

Donia, the Winter girl, is probably my favorite character in this series so far. Each girl that Keenan finds must take the ultimate test to see if she is truly the Summer Queen, if they are not, then the girl is turned into the Winter girl which entails her feeling the pain of the cold and frost unlike the Winter Queen who can control it. Donia is obviously in love with Keenan but cannot be with him because of the cold that runs through her, and because she is not the Summer Queen. Her character portrays a strong female character that can stand equally next to Keenan, and I like her because she doesn’t back down from him even though her love for him hurts her.

Simply put, I am really loving this series so far. I will say that I started book 2 in the series, Ink Exchange, right after I finished Wicked lovely. I am a couple chapters in, but have kind of put it aside while I read other books. Why? Well because Aislinn isn’t narrating the story now, it’s following another character. Call me negative, but I kind of like to keep my series going with the same character telling it. Hopefully I can throw myself back into the story and enjoy it, but we shall see.