Nancy Werlin
Publisher: Dial
Release Date: September 7, 2010
Number of Pages: 393
Phoebe finds herself drawn to Mallory, the strange and secretive new kid in school, and the two girls become as close as sisters . . . until Mallory's magnetic older brother, Ryland, shows up during their junior year. Ryland has an immediate, exciting hold on Phoebe, but a dangerous hold, for she begins to question her feelings about her best friend and, worse, about herself. Soon she'll discover the shocking truth about Ryland and Mallory: that these two are visitors from the faerie realm who have come to collect on an age-old debt. Generations ago, the faerie queen promised Pheobe's ancestor five extraordinary sons in exchange for the sacrifice of one ordinary female heir. But in hundreds of years there hasn't been a single ordinary girl in the family, and now the faeries are dying. Could Phoebe be the first ordinary one? Could she save the faeries, or is she special enough to save herself?
Impossible is probably one of my favorite books, so of course I had high expectations for Extraordinary. But it didn't quite meet them. I should have known better. Whenever I have super-high expectations, I'm usually let down. Even though it didn't meet my expectations, I still enjoyed it.
I didn't realy connect to the main character, Phoebe. I found that she was very naive. For instance, she fell in love with Ryland even though he never treated her well. She acted very childish at times.
I felt that the writing was very detached from the story. I loved Werlin's writing in Impossible, but she just didn't do it for me in this one. I also found the story very predictable. Not in a sense where I knew exactly what was going to happen; it was more that I knew the big picture. Between some chapters, there was Conversations with the Faerie Queen; I thought this gave too much away. I would have liked to figure out things with Phoebe instead.
Overall, I did enjoy Extraordinary, but it's definitely not one of my favorites. If you're a big fairy fanatic, then I would check this one out.
rating:
I'm not a HUGE fairy fan persay, but this one does have a nice cover and title. I just finished reading a middle-grade book on the Fey, so I'll be taking a break from them for a bit, but this might be my next fairy read. From your review, it sounds promising.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've decided that when I pick up a book I'll just be really skeptical about it, so I won't be let down later on. I'm barely recovering from a reading slump caused by a bad book :)