Dust Girl by Sarah Zettel

Callie is living in Kansas during the Dust Bowl.  She and her mother run a hotel.  Her mother refuses to leave, even though almost everyone else has.  Callie's mother swears that some day, Callie's father will come back for them, so they're staying right there.  Then one day, during a terrible dust storm, Callie's mother disappears, and Callie learns who her father really is.

I'm not ruining anything but saying that Callie realizes she's half fairy.  You learn it pretty quickly.  Her father never came back because he's a fairy prince being held captive because he wants to return to his mortal wife but his family wants him to marry some princess.  As always, there are the good fairies and the bad faeries, but even the good faeries aren't all that good, and everyone speaks in riddles and it's hard to get a straight answer out of anyone. 

Callie sets off to find her mother, and she's joined by Jack, a hobo, and we later learn, a Jew, which gets you kicked out of just as many places as being Black does.

It was draggy.  There was a lot of exposition and not a lot happening.  I just wasn't that interested.  There was nothing new or exciting being done with the world of fairies.  Callie and Jack are clearly set up to have a romantic relationship somewhere down the line in the series, but they don't have very much chemistry and it just wasn't all that interesting.

Don't really have much else to say about it.  It was fine.  No need to dash out and get it.

Let's talk about the cover.  Callie's father is a black man.  Callie describes her skin as being "cream-colored" but gets darker when she's out in the sun (which she is the whole book).  There's mention of her hair being "coarse."  There's the suggestion that Callie can "pass" for white, but the longer she's on the road, the more she begins to look like her father.  She requires glamours to conceal herself and make her look like a white girl so she can get into places.  I'm not sure this cover is a great representation of Callie. Thoughts?

Waiting on Wednesday: The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Long

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine to spotlight an upcoming release that we're excited about. This week I'm waiting on Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Long.

A darkly compelling mix of romance, fairy tale, and suspense from a new voice in teen fiction

The trees swallowed her brother whole, and Jenny was there to see it. Now seventeen, she revisits the woods where Tom was taken, resolving to say good-bye at last. Instead, she's lured into the trees, where she finds strange and dangerous creatures who seem to consider her the threat. Among them is Jack, mercurial and magnetic, with secrets of his own. Determined to find her brother, with or without Jack's help, Jenny struggles to navigate a faerie world where stunning beauty masks some of the most treacherous evils, and she's faced with a choice between salvation or sacrifice--and not just her own. (Summary from GoodReads)




What can I say? I'm a sucker for fairy books. I like the fact that this might be a little darker than your average faery tale, and it kind of reminds me of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series which I loved. 

The Treachery of Beautiful Things comes out Aug. 16th.

Enchanted Ivy by Sarah Beth Durst

Lily has one goal in life, go to Princeton just like her father and grandfather did. She can't help but think that going to Princeton will lead to better things, better than her grandpa's flower shop, better than her crazy mother, better than her deceased father who no one talks about. When her grandpa invites Lily and her mother to go with him to his reunion it turns out that Lily is being given the Legacy Test that could lead to her automatic admission into Princeton. Of course Lily is terrified and determined to find the key that will get her into her dream school, which grows exponentially as she learns that Princeton is not what she thought it was, i.e. magic. As she starts her quest she makes the acquaintance of a dreamy were-tiger, a gorgeous knight, and more gargoyles than she had anticipated; she watches as a seemingly simple 'old boys' test turns into a quest to save the magical compact between two worlds and her family's lives.

Let's be honest this was not a deep life-altering tale. It was fluff, unadulterated magically romantic fluff. And I enjoyed it, really enjoyed the hell out of it! It helped that the dialogue was pretty snappy, characters were engaging, the plot line adequately built, and it didn't pretend to be anything that it wasn't. It didn't go for deep and meaningful, it didn't go for gut wrenching, it was satisfied with being entertaining and that's how it should be. I'm not going to go into greater detail, because I think it is really unnecessary. This book was delightful and I actually don't feel super strongly about it, but I'm mostly posting this in the hopes that my friend Laura will read my review, then skim through the book, and then take me on a tour of Princeton and show me all the buildings and gargoyles. Dorky? Absolutely but necessary to appease my literary geekhood.

13 Treasures by Michelle Harrison

Thirteen year old Tanya has grown up being able to see faeries. She is able to pass off their tricks as clumsiness, practical jokes, and bad luck, until her mother fed up with her misbehavior sends her to her grandmother's estate. That's right; not a house, cabin, shack, or apartment, but the large estate and manor that Tanya and her mother usually vacation at for a week during the summer. To say that Tanya and her grandmother have a disconnected relationship is an understatement, and the prospect of living with a woman who views with seeming disgust for unnumbered days is not a prospect that Tanya looks forward to. This is especially clear to Tanya as the faeries are become more malicious, the disappearance of a girl fifty years ago is related to her own family, and the only person to help her is weirdo Fabian the caretaker's son.