Book: Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston

Published by HarperTeen

Purchased for my Nook (352 pages)

Genre: YA: Paranormal- Fairies

Find out more: Goodreads~Barnes And Noble~Amazon~Lesley Livingston

Goodreads Summary: Since the dawn of time, the Faerie have taken. . . .

Seventeen-year-old actress Kelley Winslow always thought faeries were just something from childhood stories. Then she meets Sonny Flannery. He’s a changeling—a mortal taken as an infant and raised among Faerie—and within short order he’s turned Kelley’s heart inside out and her life upside down.

For Kelley’s beloved Central Park isn’t just a park—it’s a gateway between her ordinary city and the Faerie’s dangerous, bewitching Otherworld. Now Kelley’s eyes are opening not just to the Faerie that surround her, but to the heritage that awaits her . . . a destiny both wondrous and strange.

I didn’t like Wondrous Strange at first.  But by the end of the book, I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

There’s a lot of setting up in Wondrous Strange, and it isn’t until the end that things really pick up.  I’m glad I gave it a chance, because it is interesting.  I like the idea of four different courts, and the Janus, who protect the gate that Oberon closed (except for one day a year).  There’s some interesting fairy mythology in this book.

Now that I think about it, there were quite a few clues in the book that I didn’t pick up on.  I really liked the theater aspect of the novel.  And how fairies popped up everywhere.

Wondrous Strange is narrated by Kelly and Sonny.  I thought their stories were interesting together, and I think it worked better with the two of them as narrators than either of them on their own.

Kelley did handle things a little too well.  You find out you’re the daughter of a fairie, and you act like it’s perfectly normal?  It was a little weird for her at first, I think, but overall, she was a tad bit okay with the family secret.  Of course, I’m totally basing her reaction on what I’d do if I found I was the daughter of 2 fairies…which would be freaking out.  Kelley did crack me up, I have to admit.

As for the other characters, they were just okay.  None really stood out, except for Sonny, but there’s something off about him.  It was hard to care about most of them in this book, but maybe in the next book…

I give Wondrous Strange a 3 out of 5.  I enjoyed it, especially towards the end, but it took a little too long to get going.