Children can have a
cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite
proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re
destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found
the thing she’s been made for.
Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.
At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.
Until one day, he does…
As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?
Pages: 336
Genres: Young adult, fantasy, romance, LGBQTFairfold is an odd town where the humans and fae have a truce of sorts and live side-by-side somewhat peacefully. If the odd tourist goes missing, the townspeople know the tourist must have done something to anger the Folk and if any people of Fairfold go missing well the person should have known better.
Benjamin and Hazel Evans were once close siblings that were
neglected by their parents. As children they were often alone and filled their
time with their stories of knights and heroes and played in the dark forest
when they should have been safe at home. As teenagers they both futilely try to
fill a void of their own doing. Hazel was frustrated with the monotony of her
life, but she gets more than she bargains for when the boy with pointed ears
and horns atop his head awakens and all that’s left was a shattered glass
coffin.
This is the first book I have read by Holly Black. The
writing style is more similar to reading a fairy tale. It’s strange and it was
difficult for me to immerse myself into the book. The book begins with a
feeling of a light-hearted read, but soon it becomes darker as fairy tales do. There
were many twists that were unexpected and the pacing of the story was slow to
start but picked up. I liked how the author conveyed the accord of the Folk and
humans and how tenuous it truly was. Also the variety of different fairies was
fun to read.
Ben and Hazel’s relationship was the strongest in the book
and where I focused on even more so than their love interests. The writing
pulled through in showing how their bond was solid in their childhood, damaged
in their teenage years and then reformed after their trials. It was finding out
what happened to the siblings that pulled me through this book. The romance in
the book was lacking and I didn’t understand why they chose their partners.
There was no real build-up and it left me wanting.
The boy in the crystal coffin was the part of the story I was
most intrigued about. I was astonishingly disappointed. The boy was so
uninteresting. He was the part I was most looking forward to, yet when it got
to the explanation of how he got in the coffin, I couldn’t care less. I was more attracted to Hazel plot.
Overall it wasn’t a particularly bad book, it had potential,
but there were way too many things going on with each of the characters. It
would have been better if the author had scratched out some and focused on a
few.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
