Wicked Lovely - Melissa Marr

Sorry for the delay in posts. Suffice to say that while taking 6 classes wasn’t my best idea, taking six classes including a high level accounting class ONLINE, a high level literature class, and an economics class of any kind, was among the worst I’ve ever had. But I actually had some time to read over spring vacation, and manage to devour a whole three books in my free time, and I wanted to share them with you all!

So Wicked Lovely was prominently placed at the library by my fiance’s house in South Carolina, where I spent my week, and his mother let me use her card to get it. I’ve heard of it a lot, but I’ve never actually had a chance to look at it before. I’m really glad I did pick it up, though, because I kinda fell in love with it. I also hate myself for picking it up, because I can’t read the sequels until after May 16^th, when finals are over!

Wicked Lovely is the story of four interesting individuals and a lot of fairies and magic. Keenan is the summer king of the fairies, but his powers are bound by the winter queen, his mother, until he can find his own queen of summer—a human girl converted by his will into one of the fae, who can withstand the power of winter when she touches the winter queen’s staff. Aislinn is the newest human girl he’s pinning his hopes on—but what he doesn’t know is that Aislinn can see fairies, has always been able to see them, and knows what he is…and she doesn’t want anything to do with it. Seth is her human crush and her safe house, a mortal boy who lives in an old converted train car and provides her a place surrounded in steal and empty of fairies. Donia is the winter girl—the last human girl who took a chance of Keenan, but couldn’t withstand the magic of winter. Thus, she is bound to be in the winter queen’s power until such a day that another girl takes the test and loses, taking the winter magic from her. Her goal is to tell any girl who prepares to try of the dangers of trusting Keenan and taking the test.

First off, I’m biased and I can admit that. I absolutely love books about fairies, even to the point that I was able to get over my initial desire to avoid the book just because of how central the romance is to the plot, something I’ve been more and more uninterested in lately. From the very first chapter, I was so incredibly glad I’d decided to give it a chance. The book starts out with the test of the summer queen, and Donia reaching for the staff and first becoming the winter girl. This is the part where I instantly fell in love with the book, because Donia is truly in love with Keenan when she takes this test….and it doesn’t matter. Love doesn’t cure all, and Donia still becomes the winter girl, and faces the fact that Keenan continues looking for his queen even while she suffers in love for him.

This certainly isn’t an entirely original idea, and I’ve read plenty of books where the main character has an old flame who tries to tell off his current affection, but I’ve never read a book where the old flame had such reason, and had her story told just as much as his. Wicked Lovely completely takes the stereotypes that young adult books have been producing in the past few years, stereotypes about love conquering all, the old jealous flame, and the girl who starts out headstrong and somehow ends up melting into the male lead...and it turns them on their head. I love it for that reason.

There are so many things I could say about this book that I’m honestly afraid I’d ruin it for you if I went on, because I truly, truly love this book. I know I could gush about it for pages, but that wouldn't be as much fun for you! So I’m going to just say that I heartily recommend this book, if you’re one of those people who haven’t yet touched it—although I think I’m a minority in not having done so before this past few weeks, haha. Wicked Lovely is a great book, with a great idea behind it, and I completely devoured it in a few mere hours because I didn’t want to put it down. So if you’re a fan of fairies, especially wicked and cruel fairies, or you just want to read a book that breaks some of the romantic stereotypes of the modern YA genre, definitely look into picking up a copy of Wicked Lovely next time you go book hunting!