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Wicked Lovely | 
 enlarge | Author: Melissa Marr
Publisher: HarperTeen
Category: Book
List Price: $8.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  122 reviews
Sales Rank: 12929
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0061214671
EAN: 9780061214677
ASIN: 0061214671
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
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Product Description
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 21st century faery tale.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 117 more reviews...
 Dark November 16, 2008
All of her life Aislinn - like her mother and grandmother before her - has been able to see what noone else can see: the faeries that constantly surround us. They are not the delightful helpful little creatures the children's stories would have us believe in. Rather they are human-sized, and extremely dangerous. Aislinn has seen the horrible and viscious things they do to eachother; the way they tease and torment humans. Her earliest memories are of her grandmother teaching her about the faeries - that the faeries must never know that she can see them. The rules for safety: 1. Don't ever attract their attention. 2. Don't speak to invisible faeries. 3. Don't stare at invisible faeries.
For 17 years Aislinn has followed the rules, and has been safe from detection, but one day that begins to change. She is still following the rules, but the fey are not. They begin to notice her. Two in particular - a male and female - start to stalk her, and talk to her, putting on their glamour which makes them visible and disguised to humans. These changes convince Aislinn to confide in her good friend Seth, who lives in a steel train car where she has always felt safe (the faeries not being able to be to close to steel or iron). When the faeries do not lose interst in her, she and Seth begin their quest to find out what they want from her.
This book was very dark and seductive -wicked and lovely. The first few chapters were a bit hard to get into, but I soon found myself entranced. I think it was the realationships which made this book. The unspoken atttraction between Aislinn and Seth was so real. I almost felt like it was me feeling the emotions and uncertainties of a new and undiscoverd love.
The faery characters were also very well developed. Other than the bad guy, the winter queen, who was pretty one dimensional. But when your good guys are already the bad guys, I suppose it is hard to make a convincing villain.
A well paced story, plenty of action, and a satifying ending. At least satisfying for a first book in a series.
 Boring, predictable, short November 12, 2008
Contrary to most reviewers I enjoyed Ink Exchange more than this book. There wasn't much to the plot, there were no twists, no turns, nothing surprising. The love interest wasn't very interesting, everything seemed to fall easily into place, everything was convenient for the main character. I don't feel like I was immersed in a faerie world, more like faeries were thrown here or there in our world. You don't get too much information into the daily lives of the faeries either. I felt this book was bland and uninteresting. I suggest giving Ink Exchange a try instead of this.
 Humans, yes. Faeries? No. October 27, 2008
First off let me say that my view of this book changed drastically as I neared the end. At about page 100 I wanted to stop reading altogether, and almost did. I was frustrated, even angry at the fact that I didn't feel like I was seeing anything NEW. I felt I was getting pieces of Twilight (hot otherworldly reddish-haired boy shows up at human girl's high school) and Tithe (girl starts out in human world and ends up immersed in faerie . . . kind of.)
There wasn't any point for Keenan to go to Aislinn's school. He didn't stay in school and he could've just as easily stalked her after class. If an otherworldly creature goes to school, I want to see him struggle to interact with students, have altercations with teachers, be befuddled by homework, etc. If he goes but isn't really engaging in the high school experience, just leave it out. But that was a more minor issue. My biggest problems with the book are as follows:
All throughout the book Aislin tells us that faeries are dangerous, scary, terrifying. Perhaps this over-dramatized interpretation will give you a good idea:
Aislinn: Faeries are so awful. They're evil, cruel, terrifying. AHHHHH THEY'RE COMING FOR ME! Oh wait, no, they're coming to save me from some violent humans. My bad.
I got incredibly frustrated with Aislinn's (btw, how do you get "Ash" from Aislinn? Um, what?) constant references to the dangerous nature of faeries. Aislinn tells us that faeries are bad, but we almost never SEE it. For all the reader can tell, faeries live among humans but humans never even realize it, because faeries are busy doing their own thing, leaving humans alone! How is this dangerous? Scary? Terrifying? The scariest people in the book are the three human guys who try to attack Aislinn. The only faerie who is even remotely dangerous is Beira, but even she is forbidden (by the rules she made with Irial) to hurt the girls Keenan courts.
So in summation, NONE OF THE FAERIES ARE DANGEROUS. What the H, Aislinn?
Then it occurred to me: Aislinn is an unreliable narrator. She literally has no idea what she's talking about. She's been poisoned against faeries by her grandmother (who's reasons we only learn much later) and thus has a very skewed, very wrong view of faeries.
Ok. This I can work with. The trouble is, I don't know if Marr realizes how unreliable Aislinn is. I think she (Marr) believes in the danger of faeries to some extent (considering the quotes she puts at the beginning of each chapter) and I don't think she realizes how little information about faeries she gives her readers. this brings us to my next big problem with the story.
The faeries . . . weren't faeries. I mean, not really. Ok, they looked cool, some were icy, some had vines around them, but . . . they acted EXACTLY LIKE THE HUMANS IN THE STORY. Almost ridiculously so. They sure talked like humans, use human phrases, dialect and slang. There was nothing "faerie" about them except for the way they looked and that they could live forever, even though they apparently "have no souls." (What's that about? What exactly, ARE faeries, if not spiritual beings? If you're going to drop that in, PLEASE explain it at least a tiny bit!) She could've interchanged the Summer Girls with Aislinn's school friends and we wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between them. And the winter girl was, well, like any girl who's had her heart broken by the boy she loved. Granted, these girls were once human at one time, but not anymore.
That brings me to another thing - how do humans just become faeries? I would have been willing to believe this if given reason to, but Marr just states it as a fact and doesn't really explain how or why. She does this a lot. I feel like she relied on quotes from other sources to illustrate HER view of the faerie world, and thus didn't add anything of her own to it. And that wasn't enough for me. At all.
In fact, Marr seems entirely incapable, or maybe just unwilling, to provide descriptions for almost anything. I can tell you what Seth's train looks like and what the inside of Donia's and Biera's living rooms look like. But that's it. No description of, I dunno, the everyday things people see and pass by and notice all the time. There were almost no descriptive passages. And the thing is, I don't like when authors ramble on for pages describing every little thing, when all you want is to get to the action! But I do prefer SOME description, so I know where the characters are some of the time! I often found myself reading backward to get a sense of where the characters even were, because they walked around a lot, and their walks weren't described.
I also feel like Marr put the faeries in the human world so she didn't have to describe Faerie, even if it meant throwing in a single paragraph about one acre of forest land. All the faeries live in the human realm. They are allegedly affected by iron but in reality is hardly affects them at all. I think Marr put in the comment about iron being harmful because many olds texts make that claim, but then she didn't follow through.
i.e.: Iron burns faeries, they can't be around it, in the city, in trains, etc. Oh, I didn't mean THESE faeries, the main ones in the story. THEY can be around iron. They can even hang out around and in trains, and often do. I mean iron affects OTHER faeries. Weak ones that we never even meet and may not even exist.
I mean honestly, you don't have to include certain faerie rules just because they exist in myths. In fact, if you're going to do this and then find a million ways for your faeries NOT play by these rules, do me a favor: please leave it out.
But this seemed a reoccurring problem: faeries are mean. Wait, no they're not. Faeries can't touch iron. Wait, yes they can. Seth isn't into dating. Wait, yes he is. Grams doesn't let Aislinn do much on her own. Wait, yes, she TOTALLY DOES.
Some of it we can chalk up to Aislinn being an unreliable narrator, but a lot of the time I felt Marr herself was unreliable. As you can see by now, that really bugged me.
So what DID I like?
I liked the humans. Aislinn's girl friends were ridiculously horny, which you don't see much in YA, yet I know plenty of girls who talk just like that. They could've had more dimension, but so could've everyone. Grams was a pretty cool character, or, again, would've been, if she could've been developed more. And then there was Seth.
Oh, Seth. Some people had a problem with Seth. He was Too Perfect. He was Unrealistic. Ok, I can see how people might think that. Except I'm pretty much dating him. (Of course, the real version is a more developed character, but I digress.)
I loved Seth. I thought he was a fantastic addition to the whole YA boyfriend canon. A lot of YA girls date boys who treat them poorly, rush them into a physical relationship, don't see them as an equal, try to control them. Because of this, these girls are immensely unsatisfied by their relationships, but honestly believe that all (mortal) guys are like this. (They're not. Just a lot of them.)
So how does the YA genre deal with this phenomena of great-girl-dating-guy-who-doesn't-know-her worth? They create FANTASTICAL, IMAGINARY, MAGICAL boys to fulfill the average humans girls thirst for a partner she deserves. Instead of raising standards for real boys, and giving girls the mental and emotional tools to say to a boy, "I'm not going to be with you if you don't care about me me, respect me, and treat me like an equal," girls are provided with a temporary escape from a disappointing reality: Hence, Keenan, Edward Cullen, I could go on but I won't. I mean, let's face it: THIS IS WHY BOOKS LIKE TWILIGHT ARE SO POPULAR. They give girls a glimpse of a magical, indescribably hot guy who literally WORSHIPS the human girl of his affections. Who wouldn't want a piece of that?
But there's a problem with all that. Indulging in fantasy is one thing. Replacing genuine, real life needs with imaginary characters is another. And as people who have an immense abilty to affect and tantalize the minds of young women, YA writers have a responsibility to at least ALLOW FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF ANOTHER OPTION. And that option is . . .
Seth.
The reason people have a problem with Seth is that they believe no guy can be that great, sweet, supportive if he's also a HUMAN. But the truth is, guys like that DO exist. A lot of guys who AREN'T like that exist as well, but Seth-types are out there. And convincing girls that this kind of affection can only be found from an immortal is kind of dangerous. The solution: more writers take a cue from Melissa Marr and create decent human guys. At least, occasionally. With that in mind, here are . . .
Valuable things learned from Seth:
Seth was pretty promiscuous, but instead of continuing down that path, he learned the different between sex with love and sex without love. Sometimes, to learn what's right for us, we have to experience things that aren't.
If a guy takes advantage of a girl, it's not her fault. This part of the book was incredibly moving and literally revolutionary in my mind. Aislinn is given fairy wine, which causes her to kind of lose her head, and her memory. Seth assures her that if anything happen while she was intoxicated with fairy drugs, it wasn't her fault. I encourage anyone to read this passage, to yourself and any teenagers in your life. It deals with being taken advantage of, and the issue of consent, which is incredibly important not only for YA readers but for all of us.
Anyone who hasn't read the book should stop reading this review now, because I want to talk a little about the ending. *Spoilers*
I grew to like Wicked Lovely and was very impressed by the ending. Some people might not have liked how things turned out, but I thought it was great. It was totally unexpected (at least some of it) and that is rare nowadays. More often then not, I find myself knowing exactly how a book is going to end about halfway through. Wicked Lovely surprised me. Thank you, Melissa, for that. I think people might dislike parts of the ending because not enough people died. However, I've seen more than one writer kill off characters at the end of a book just because s/he feels like s/he has to kill someone, and that's not good writing. People also might say the characters didn't have to sacrifice enough, but remember, Keenan sacrificed the ability to be with EVERY girl he loved for centuries. He was a little too casual about it by the time we meet him, but maybe he had to be to survive. Donia sacrified her entire life as well, and was willing to die so save the faerie and human worlds. She'd already made her sacrifices and thus deserved a happy ending.
And Aislinn. Well, she didn't sacrifice much, but then again, if she had left Seth, whom she loved, just because some fancy faerie guy flashed pretty copper hair, I wouldn't have had the slightest bit of respect for her. She did what was in her heart and for once I was rooting for the human guy.
And she still will have to watch Seth die, which will be a sacrifice later on.
So there it is. Too many problems for a five star review, but charmed me enough by the end with the good parts. I would recommend it for people who want to read a story primarily about humans, with a slight fantastical twist.
Enjoyed it - 4 1/2 stars October 8, 2008
I enjoyed this book! After over 100 reviews, there's not much more to say other than that.
Flawed and Loving it October 7, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was really excited about this novel when it first came out, but the hardback was too much money. So I waited for it in paperback, and became uninterested. The more I learned about the novel the more it sounded like a rip-off of Black's Tithe. After reading it I'm so glad I did.
Ok. First off I have to address the complaints about how dark the fairies are. For hardcore fairy fans that have done tons of research it's not shocking that the fairies are dark and gritty. For those who haven't here's the heads up. This is based off of fairy folklore not modern sugar pop fairies. This book, though, isn't any darker then Black's Tithe. It might even be a bit lighter.
The characters descriptions in this book are mainly left to the imagination. Hair colors are given and that's pretty much it. Clothing, piercings, and tattoos are also given. For me that really didn't take away from the tale. The author gave more details to the characters appearance as the story continued. This added to the writing style and the story. Revealing little things about the character and their appearance as you go. Details on the fairies are not lacking, and are quite rich.
The writing is ruff, but this is a first time writer so that has to pan in. The writing style has a really unique feel. As if it's revealing itself. The points of views are switched and it's fun finding out how they all feel and look at each other. Coming to gritty points about our fairy prince, almost even stepping into the realm of evil. While the main character is brave in the eyes of those seeing her, she's fearful and afraid. The switching of characters may be bumpy at times but it only adds to the tale. Someone told me that Seth (the main character's love interest) should have been added to the views. I thought it was perfect keeping the views to royalty.
This has some of the most interesting cast of characters, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some stereotypical either. Donia is a girl still in love with the man who betrayed her, making other girls fall in love with him as she has to endure her punishment for making that ultimate sacrifice for him. Though I was a little disappointed about the lack of depth on her. The main character isn't to original, but she stands out. The fairy prince is the perfect dreamy guy, with a hidden agenda and an evil side he almost indulges in. The other love interest Seth is the perfect bad boy, quite smart guy that may make some girls swoon. The side characters are typical but have a wit to them. The evil villain is just what you expect, and nothing more.
The plot is simple, but in a way vastly more original then some out there. Having the main character trapped in a situation that has all the outcomes being nothing she desires, and instead has to except and make things good. This simple plot also allows for the book to seem more raw and fulfilled. Showing the characters strong and then weak, so that they seem human. Though the evil villains demise is weak and left me thinking did she even get defeated? The novel goes on, and the way the love triangles are solved at the end are perfect, all but making up for the hacked demise of the villain.
This book is more mature. Dealing with virginity, thoughts of sex (very mild), drugs, and drinking, but none of that's really over the top. Though a couple reviewers said that the novel had sex in it the characters only ever dabble in making out and heavy hints of sexual activities.
**** This novel is refreshing in many aspects and Urban Fantasy fans will find it in vast relief with other books. Though it is riddled with flaws for a first time writer it does deliver. For fairy fans and Urban Fantasy fans you can't miss this. I give it
3.5
stars.
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