Oh no another book where love and lust blinds all rational thought and naive different girl chases after the big bad boy who will defy his captors for his one true love and completely erasing the fact that he is a murderer, etc etc etc

Whatever, it's a fun fantasy romance, it is fiction, just enjoy the book without thinking about the red flags. ( )

I enjoyed this book overall (really like this sort of "fairy tale") but hated the protagonists love interest. He ended up being one of those guys who show up far too much in YA fantasy/supernatural stories where inappropriate behavior is forgiven because of magical shenanigans. Just because a dude has been 17 for a few hundred years doesnt give him a pass to start dating with real teenagers. Its weird. Also stalking is still stalking even if the devil made you do it. ( )

this book was okay, but it was really just okay; I've come to expect more from Maggie Stiefvater. :( that being said, it was written before the books of hers I love the most and it's not like I'm not totally reading the sequel anyway, I'm not made of STONE. ( )

16-year-old Deirdre is super-gifted as a harpist and at everything else she puts her mind to, really. That doesn't meant she doesn't get incredibly nervous before every performance, so much so that she needs to vomit every time before hitting the stage. When a strange (and absolutely gorgeous) boy appears in the restroom to hold her hair during one such regurgitation session, things start getting weird really fast: she keeps finding four-leaf clovers laying around, followed by actual Fair Folk, her annoying aunt becomes even more so on a grand scale, her grandma reacts in a weirdly-hostile way to Strange Gorgeous New Maybe Boyfriend, and her best friend seems to be approaching an awkward declaration of love that Deirdre really doesn't want to deal with at the moment. When the fairies turn dangerous, she needs to decide if she can trust Handsome But Still Sort of Weird Boy, but the most difficult bit may be deciding that she can trust her own self and her abilities. This was much more romance than I usually go for in a novel, but like all other Stiefvater works I've read, it was absolutely excellent and I can't wait to read the second book. ( )

This was a MUCH better Twilight with a much more powerful heroine! I'm noticing a pattern in Maggie Stiefvater's novels where almost too much happens in the last 40 pages. The novel is so nicely paced, and then it's an all out frontal attack with action and information and twists and connections! More like an movie than a traditional book, now that I think of it. It's an interesting technique. ( )