What do you think?
Rate this book
Wings #1
Wings
Laurel was mesmerized, staring at the pale things with wide eyes. They were terrifyingly beautiful—too beautiful for words.
Laurel turned to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. They looked almost like wings.
In this extraordinary tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever.
Laurel turned to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. They looked almost like wings.
In this extraordinary tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever.
320 pages, ebook
First published May 5, 2009
811 people are currently reading
48772 people want to read
About the author
Aprilynne Pike
58 books5,045 followersAprilynne Pike has been spinning faerie stories since she was a child with a hyper-active imagination. At the age of twenty she received her BA in Creative Writing from Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho. When not writing, Aprilynne can usually be found at the gym; she also enjoys singing, acting, reading, and working with pregnant moms as a childbirth educator and doula. Aprilynne currently lives with her husband and three kids in Utah, and dreams of warmer climates.
Aprilynne Pike's #1 New York Times best-selling debut, WINGS, is the first of four books about a seemingly ordinary girl with a not-so-ordinary destiny. In this tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever...
Aprilynne's Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/aprilynnepike
Aprilynne Pike's #1 New York Times best-selling debut, WINGS, is the first of four books about a seemingly ordinary girl with a not-so-ordinary destiny. In this tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever...
Aprilynne's Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/aprilynnepike
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,435 reviews
January 5, 2012
I probably shouldn't have read this. If you read the pre-read section at the bottom of the review, you'll see that I didn't even intend to order it. Yet, since I had it, I thought I'd give it a go.
I lasted 24 pages because that's all my sanity could take.
Laurel is a magazine-beautiful, waif-like teenager who leaves homeschooling in grade 10 in order to begin her high school career.
And that's when the story stops making sense. Not that the above makes any sense either. Models in magazines aren't even asairbrushed beautiful as models in magazines. I would just like to point that out now.
The comment could fly past as poor characterization and sloppy writing if it didn't go hand in hand with Laurel's horrible relationship with food. In fact, a great deal of emphasis is placed on what she eats. Once again, not entirely a problem except attention is also placed on how she feels when she eats. Which is guilty and "like a battle has been lost" when she eats half a pear and half a cup of juice.
I know, Nickhun, I know.
The writing is just terrible and the characterization can't even be mentioned because I'm pretty sure Goodread's lax profanity rules would not cover what I would end up saying.
Mostly, it's all so very saccharine sweet and ickly chaste, yet oddly kinky and unbelievably tame. I feel like I'm describing Disneyland here, but if I do, that might make people think of fun. Notice I deliberately left fun off the list. But, luckily, there was comparable amounts of vomit.
Spoilers below, folks.
Apparently. APPARENTLY, Laurel is not actually a human, but a fairy. And the reason she is a vegan is because she is a plant. Like, as in, she is not a red blooded mammal but is an actual plant...
I'm sorry, I'm going to need a judge's ruling on that.
Thank you. Steve Carell. I think you've said it all.
Look, you just. You don't do that. You just...don't. I mean, what school of biology did you go to? The Stephanie Meyer School of Biology, that's what!
I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't 8th grade biology talk a lot about how plants photosynthesize to make energy and how they do respire but at night when there's no light and about how they don't have things like digestive systems and they don't have blood but, hey they do have Chloroplasts and Chlorophylls. And how they don't digest nutrients by eating them but by absorbing them through their roots. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of thought put into this.
I mean, look at organs like the brain. How does her brain work? They need A LOT Of protein. A huge amount actually. Which you can get by eating a healthy vegan diet, but she's not even doing that.
Scientists don't look at an ape-like creature and have this conversation:
"So, Doctor Rosenbaum, what do you think it is? Mammal? Reptile? Plant? Rock?"
"I don't know. I just don't know. If only there was some way of determining these things! Look, just to be safe, put it down as a bird. Just because it doesn't fly - doesn't mean it can't!"
I used to think that the old troll argument of, "You're overthinking it! Stop thinking so much and you'll enjoy it!" was full of shit. But, in this case, they're right. My highly developed mammalian brain just can not handle this level of stupidity. But even if I could somehow switch it off. Well, there enough other bad stuff in here that would spoil it anyway.
_____________________________________________Pre-read comments______________________________________
I'm not entirely sure why I'm reading this. For some reason I thought there was some controversy over this author and that I'd barred it, but it's not on my Do Not Read shelf so I must have been mistaken.
I went to pick up books from the library this afternoon and it was among them. I don't clearly remember ordering it so I asked for the order date and went home to Mr. Kennedy. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Hey honey, was I drinking heavily on the 15th of December?"
Mr Kennedy: "Hmmm...the 15th was a Thursday. That's Corona day."
Me: "Ugh. Okay, definitely drunk. That explains it."
Mr Kennedy: "Let me guess, you found traffic cones and police hats again?"
Me: *Thinks for a second* "That probably would have been the preferable outcome."
I lasted 24 pages because that's all my sanity could take.
Laurel is a magazine-beautiful, waif-like teenager who leaves homeschooling in grade 10 in order to begin her high school career.
And that's when the story stops making sense. Not that the above makes any sense either. Models in magazines aren't even as
The comment could fly past as poor characterization and sloppy writing if it didn't go hand in hand with Laurel's horrible relationship with food. In fact, a great deal of emphasis is placed on what she eats. Once again, not entirely a problem except attention is also placed on how she feels when she eats. Which is guilty and "like a battle has been lost" when she eats half a pear and half a cup of juice.
I know, Nickhun, I know.
The writing is just terrible and the characterization can't even be mentioned because I'm pretty sure Goodread's lax profanity rules would not cover what I would end up saying.
Mostly, it's all so very saccharine sweet and ickly chaste, yet oddly kinky and unbelievably tame. I feel like I'm describing Disneyland here, but if I do, that might make people think of fun. Notice I deliberately left fun off the list. But, luckily, there was comparable amounts of vomit.
Spoilers below, folks.
Apparently. APPARENTLY, Laurel is not actually a human, but a fairy. And the reason she is a vegan is because she is a plant. Like, as in, she is not a red blooded mammal but is an actual plant...
I'm sorry, I'm going to need a judge's ruling on that.
Thank you. Steve Carell. I think you've said it all.
Look, you just. You don't do that. You just...don't. I mean, what school of biology did you go to? The Stephanie Meyer School of Biology, that's what!
I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't 8th grade biology talk a lot about how plants photosynthesize to make energy and how they do respire but at night when there's no light and about how they don't have things like digestive systems and they don't have blood but, hey they do have Chloroplasts and Chlorophylls. And how they don't digest nutrients by eating them but by absorbing them through their roots. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of thought put into this.
I mean, look at organs like the brain. How does her brain work? They need A LOT Of protein. A huge amount actually. Which you can get by eating a healthy vegan diet, but she's not even doing that.
Scientists don't look at an ape-like creature and have this conversation:
"So, Doctor Rosenbaum, what do you think it is? Mammal? Reptile? Plant? Rock?"
"I don't know. I just don't know. If only there was some way of determining these things! Look, just to be safe, put it down as a bird. Just because it doesn't fly - doesn't mean it can't!"
I used to think that the old troll argument of, "You're overthinking it! Stop thinking so much and you'll enjoy it!" was full of shit. But, in this case, they're right. My highly developed mammalian brain just can not handle this level of stupidity. But even if I could somehow switch it off. Well, there enough other bad stuff in here that would spoil it anyway.
_____________________________________________Pre-read comments______________________________________
I'm not entirely sure why I'm reading this. For some reason I thought there was some controversy over this author and that I'd barred it, but it's not on my Do Not Read shelf so I must have been mistaken.
I went to pick up books from the library this afternoon and it was among them. I don't clearly remember ordering it so I asked for the order date and went home to Mr. Kennedy. The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Hey honey, was I drinking heavily on the 15th of December?"
Mr Kennedy: "Hmmm...the 15th was a Thursday. That's Corona day."
Me: "Ugh. Okay, definitely drunk. That explains it."
Mr Kennedy: "Let me guess, you found traffic cones and police hats again?"
Me: *Thinks for a second* "That probably would have been the preferable outcome."
October 7, 2010
Spoiler Alert!!! Spoiler Alert!!!
This book contains content that can cause a reader to inflict bodily harm to oneself. Proceed with caution! Oh and my review might contain a spoiler or two… you've been warned.
"Don't worry. I'll keep my distance from your blossom. I know whose petals I'm allowed to get into and whose I'm not. *he inhaled deeply* Mmmmm. As fabulous as you smell, your petals are off limits to me."
Whoaaaaaaaaa!! Get your mind out of the gutter! This is a YA book about fairie flowers for crying out loud. Yes, you heard me right... fairies that are PLANTS. Yes PLANTS!
Oh fine, I'll admit, I had trouble grasping the concept as well. It was all really face palm worthy, and I was actually perplexed to find Stephenie Meyer endorsed this book until I found out that the author Aprilynne Pike is a friend of hers, so that answers that. ^^
I really struggled with this book if you couldn't tell by now, and there are so many head desk issues with the writing and concept that I actually called it quits and couldn't finish it. This book reeks of Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. You have the main character Laurel that's ohhh soooo beautiful, with amazing eyes, luminous blond hair, a thin, willowy body, with translucent white skin. Oh! And she's vegan and smells good and she's got this great guy that's too good to be true tripping over her and falling in lurves with her despite the fact that she blossoms a flower on her back and he doesn't find that the least bit weird. David, she's a PLANT!! Yes! A PLANT!! *shakes head*
Putting the Mary-Sue and PLANT issue aside, the writing is extremely simplistic and the storyline is developed in a way that makes it hard to suspend one's reality and appreciate the story for what it's worth. There were so many insignificant incidences and events that I kept losing interest and I never really came to care for Laurel or David. Oh and did I mention she's a PLANT?
Overall, I'd say that the concept had potential but noooo… she's a PLANT! It takes a talented author to create a fantastical realm and launch an idea that requires imaginary suspension, and unfortunately IMHO Aprilynne Pike didn't deliver, so lucky for Pike that she has friends in high places to get her book off the ground.
Final point… err question rather: Why is this book called Wings if it's really a PLANT and Laurel can't fly with the flower that blossoms on her back? Didn't quite get that, but I am not going to continue to read this series to find out. No thanks.
*walks away mumbling 'she's a PLANT??? WT?!?!'* ^^
This book contains content that can cause a reader to inflict bodily harm to oneself. Proceed with caution! Oh and my review might contain a spoiler or two… you've been warned.
"Don't worry. I'll keep my distance from your blossom. I know whose petals I'm allowed to get into and whose I'm not. *he inhaled deeply* Mmmmm. As fabulous as you smell, your petals are off limits to me."
Whoaaaaaaaaa!! Get your mind out of the gutter! This is a YA book about fairie flowers for crying out loud. Yes, you heard me right... fairies that are PLANTS. Yes PLANTS!
Oh fine, I'll admit, I had trouble grasping the concept as well. It was all really face palm worthy, and I was actually perplexed to find Stephenie Meyer endorsed this book until I found out that the author Aprilynne Pike is a friend of hers, so that answers that. ^^
I really struggled with this book if you couldn't tell by now, and there are so many head desk issues with the writing and concept that I actually called it quits and couldn't finish it. This book reeks of Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. You have the main character Laurel that's ohhh soooo beautiful, with amazing eyes, luminous blond hair, a thin, willowy body, with translucent white skin. Oh! And she's vegan and smells good and she's got this great guy that's too good to be true tripping over her and falling in lurves with her despite the fact that she blossoms a flower on her back and he doesn't find that the least bit weird. David, she's a PLANT!! Yes! A PLANT!! *shakes head*
Putting the Mary-Sue and PLANT issue aside, the writing is extremely simplistic and the storyline is developed in a way that makes it hard to suspend one's reality and appreciate the story for what it's worth. There were so many insignificant incidences and events that I kept losing interest and I never really came to care for Laurel or David. Oh and did I mention she's a PLANT?
Overall, I'd say that the concept had potential but noooo… she's a PLANT! It takes a talented author to create a fantastical realm and launch an idea that requires imaginary suspension, and unfortunately IMHO Aprilynne Pike didn't deliver, so lucky for Pike that she has friends in high places to get her book off the ground.
Final point… err question rather: Why is this book called Wings if it's really a PLANT and Laurel can't fly with the flower that blossoms on her back? Didn't quite get that, but I am not going to continue to read this series to find out. No thanks.
*walks away mumbling 'she's a PLANT??? WT?!?!'* ^^
December 27, 2008
Wings was my first ever fairy book and I adored it. Aprilynne Pike is so clever and creative. She has such a unique twist on fairies and I kept reading passages over and over again because they were just so interesting.
July 14, 2010
I will admit this up front - I've been doing a Summer reading project analysing the impact and influence the popularity of the Twilight series has had on paranormal YA and since this book had a Meyer quote raving it on the front, I thought I'd see what it was like. I didn't go in with very high expectation but even then I was just sullen faced and WTF-ing by the end of this book.
The story starts of in a basic enough manner with Laurel going to her first day of high school after moving to a new town and a lifetime of home schooling. She sits in biology class – take your first Twilight drink now! – And immediately gets all tongue tied and shy over an extremely attractive science nerd called David. To give Pike some credit, at least she’s setting up her love story early and not kicking her heels with pointless descriptions of everything else going on like Meyer, but give her time and that’ll change. Soon enough, she makes a distinctly Bella Swan style comment comes through:
“Below the eyes was a warm but casual smile with very straight teeth. Braces probably, Laurel thought as her tongue unconsciously ran over her own naturally straight teeth.”
How nice of her to zero in on appearances so quickly into the story. Sets her priorities up quickly and believe me, it gets worse towards the end. The first 3 chapters are pretty slow moving and unremarkable, same with the characters. David seems like the sort of guy you could imagine starring in a non threatening Disney family sitcom as the doting boyfriend of Miley Cyrus or something while tweens drool over him at Hot Topic signings. On a related side note, the movies rights for the book are optioned by Disney with Miley Cyrus attached to star. This seems particularly fitting because there are points where I just want to throw things at Laurel’s face in the same way I do with Cyrus.
Laurel isn’t particularly fun, smart, caring, special or in possession of any sort of personality trait. She seldom eats anything other than fruit, vegetables and cans of Sprite (haha I see what you did there Pike) which doesn’t seem to be of much concern to her medicine hating hippie parents, she’s skinny and proud of it (comparing herself to supermodels) and was abandoned on her parents’ doorstep in a basket under mysterious circumstances. This is all told to us, there’s very little showing in this book unless it’s something to do with flowers or David’s abs (seriously, which 15 year old boy is ripped? They make Channel 5 documentaries about body building teens and not to be complimentary!), which get their own tacked on scene which is completely unnecessary to the story. I can’t call it a plot because nothing resembling any sort of conflict or anything interesting happens until about 280 pages in. So yeah, grab a pillow and some caramel shortbread.
4 chapters in something finally happens. Well, if you can call a zit a plot device. Typically for teen girls, Laurel worries about the blemish (my back looked like the Himalaya mountain range for most of my teenage years) but after her earlier shallow comments, reading her worries about this rapidly growing bump turning into “something ugly” whilst being quietly judgemental about girls with similar situations doesn’t exactly warm me to the leading ‘heroine.’ Eventually the bump turns out not to be cancerous or, God forbid, a zit, and soon it sprouts into a giant flower. I will relent a little here and say this was a pretty interesting take on the fairy mythos. At least it was enough to recapture my interest after the 5 chapters of non plot and characters that give Julian Sands hope in the personality and charisma department. It’s serviceable stuff but it’s not exactly a page turner unless you mean in the sense that you want to turn the pages just to get on with something else more important. Does she tell her parents? Of course not, that would require giving them an active role in the story! At least they actually seem to care, unlike Bella’s parents in Twilight who exist to serve no other purpose than to make sure child services aren’t called out. They’re pretty useless but they occasionally show some interest in their daughter. Instead, Laurel tells David, who views it with geekish glee (which was kind of cute, don’t judge me, scientists are hot!) and decides to do some experiments, where it emerges that Laurel is actually a plant. Yep, a plant. Somehow I can’t imagine the Twilight meadows scene being as devastatingly romantic for Twi-hards if Edward had been a plant:
“Say it Bella. Say it!”
“Poinsettia!”
Chapter 8 introduces us to the generic suspicious figure, here to buy Laurel’s family’s old house from them. How do we know he’s suspicious? Because he’s ugly. He doesn’t even say anything particularly devious but we know he’s evil and out to ruin Laurel’s life immediately because he’s unattractive. This particularly cruel element of the story only gets worse, believe me. And for those who are taking notes, now is the time to note the introduction of the unnecessary 3rd wheel in the most pointless love triangle ever! He’s a big smug but otherwise more of the same devastatingly gorgeous young male figures with no other personality traits, and his name is Tamani. He’s here to tell Laurel all about her true identity as a faerie. Laurel doesn’t believe him – having giant freaking plants grow out of your back is as normal a part of puberty as growing boobs and wanting to kill everyone for 4 days a month – and runs off.
We’re 128 pages in – 10 chapters – and there’s no sign of a plot or any more action beyond moping and boy perving. But now we’ve got Tamani on the scene and Laurel can’t deny the amazing, passionate connection they shared, despite barely speaking or doing anything. Y’ know – true love! To quote the phrase that left a million nerds fuming, “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it!” When it comes to the revelation of Laurel’s true identity, it’s all described in a very tell-don’t- show manner; surely that’s writing rule 1 broken already? Tamani describes the faerie court and their particular purposes and then the most awkward part of the book until another 171 pages happens! It turns out the flower on Laurel’s back is the faerie equivalent of that kind of flower! Faeries use their blossom, found only in female faeries, to pollinate and reproduce! In their first scene together, Tamani accidentally got sparkly pollen all over Laurel’s arm, surely the faerie equivalent of premature ejaculation. He didn’t mean to do it of course; it had just been so long since he’d been around a woman that he couldn’t help himself. She was asking for it! Showing off that flower like it was a short skirt in a dingy nightclub! The extra kicker comes when Tamani takes glee in telling Laurel that faeries may use pollination for reproducing, but sex is for fun! Responsibility free sex; no risk of pregnancy or STDs other than maybe a little prick. Way to appeal to your base Pike. Seriously, this is more appealing to teen fantasies than free cupcakes! The topic of sex and puberty is mentioned but it’s never expanded upon. It just feels like Pike’s trying to be adult and ‘edgy’ for a YA audience even though the writing itself seems more suited to a pre-teen audience.
Along with his habit of fabulously coming over Laurel, it turns out that Laurel volunteered to be a faerie plant in the human world (because faeries age mentally much quicker than their bodies suggest, sort of like the uterus chewing demon child in reverse) and Tamani has been watching her for her entire life! As he says, it’s not spying, it’s helping! I wonder how distraught he was when there weren’t any opportunities to sneak into her room to watch her sleep. Laurel is also older than she thinks, and is 19 instead of 16. Instant age of consent!
About 250 pages in, we get some sort of plot twist, barely one, with Laurel’s dad falling extremely ill. With this comes Laurel and David’s overwhelming urge to investigate the ugly suspicious man who is going to buy the old Sewell house (the gateway to the faerie land of Avalon is on the land). 2 of the man, Barnes’s henchmen, are described as “downright grotesque”, continuing the theme of ugly = EVIL! Initiate slow clap sequence. We get a bit of action with the henchmen attempting to kill Laurel and David in a good old fashioned drowning. But luckily, Laurel’s oxygen producing breath saves David! Finally, a life saving snog, I’ve never seen that before...wait...
We get further tell-don’t-show description of more faerie mythology, combining King Arthur with Oberon from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (tell me that’s not a crossover you’ve love to see!) but it’s just shoved in there to give the illusion of Pike giving a damn about anything other than the extremely contrived love triangle. But along with this comes the scene that made this book turn from ‘meh’ material to ‘oh Christ, what the hell?’ Tamani goes into a description of the villains of the story, the trolls, in which the topic of symmetry is discussed. The more symmetrical one’s face is, the more beautiful they are, like Laurel and Tamani. Trolls lack this symmetry, ergo they are ugly. Not just ugly; hideous. The trolls lack any other defining characteristic beyond being ugly and stupid because apparently these things go hand in hand, and apparently their hideousness bothers the trolls themselves. Troll mothers are known to abandon their babies if they’re too ugly or “misshapen.”
“When evolution has given up on you, death is unavoidable.”
...
Seriously? Really Pike? Of all the elements of fail I expected to find in “Wings”, ableism was not one of them! So if one is ugly, mentally or physically impaired we should just give up on them because evolution has clearly tried to weed them out? Forgive me if I’m a bit sensitive here, I’m not a fan of such blatant displays of privilege in books aimed at an 11+ audience! To give the book credit, it took 300 pages before it really pissed me off which is 299 more than Twilight. Maybe Bella and Laurel could get together to drink Sprite and judge the less than perfect, they’d get along like a house on fire!
I’m just getting annoyed now, time to wrap this up. Blah blah blah, Laurel stops the trolls, Tamani is shot but he’s returned to Avalon where Laurel is presented with magic potion to cure her dad and a big arse diamond to give her parents enough money to be able to keep the old house and it’s all business as usual. Laurel even gets to kiss both guys. It turns out that Tamani was her former faerie BFF when they were precocious kiddies in Avalon and is hopelessly in love with her. I’d say Pike just shoved in the love triangle to make up for the lack of plot but she seems to have just shoved every plot element into the story without any real structure or thought. According to her blog, Pike wrote the book in 6 weeks and it shows.
Overall, the meh factor for this book was at an all time high/low. It was an easy enough read although there are a few moments where Pike tries to Meyer out on the dialogue. The mythos is interesting enough but never focused on, instead spending page after page telling us unnecessary things, shoving in covers to fill the plot holes with no care, and mooning over a love triangle that couldn’t be more contrived if it tried. The characters are dull and everything is handled in a serviceable but lifeless manner. The attempt to shove a plot in with the introduction of the ugly evil trolls just pissed me off; not only was it shallow and ableist, it was just plain lazy writing. Pike got a 4 book deal from this story so I guess there’s hope for us all. It’s often described as Twilight with faeries and it feels a lot like a Twilight inspired/rip-off. I can see how it would appeal to the Twilight crowd and it’s relatively undemanding stuff. I’ll probably forget all about it in the morning.
The story starts of in a basic enough manner with Laurel going to her first day of high school after moving to a new town and a lifetime of home schooling. She sits in biology class – take your first Twilight drink now! – And immediately gets all tongue tied and shy over an extremely attractive science nerd called David. To give Pike some credit, at least she’s setting up her love story early and not kicking her heels with pointless descriptions of everything else going on like Meyer, but give her time and that’ll change. Soon enough, she makes a distinctly Bella Swan style comment comes through:
“Below the eyes was a warm but casual smile with very straight teeth. Braces probably, Laurel thought as her tongue unconsciously ran over her own naturally straight teeth.”
How nice of her to zero in on appearances so quickly into the story. Sets her priorities up quickly and believe me, it gets worse towards the end. The first 3 chapters are pretty slow moving and unremarkable, same with the characters. David seems like the sort of guy you could imagine starring in a non threatening Disney family sitcom as the doting boyfriend of Miley Cyrus or something while tweens drool over him at Hot Topic signings. On a related side note, the movies rights for the book are optioned by Disney with Miley Cyrus attached to star. This seems particularly fitting because there are points where I just want to throw things at Laurel’s face in the same way I do with Cyrus.
Laurel isn’t particularly fun, smart, caring, special or in possession of any sort of personality trait. She seldom eats anything other than fruit, vegetables and cans of Sprite (haha I see what you did there Pike) which doesn’t seem to be of much concern to her medicine hating hippie parents, she’s skinny and proud of it (comparing herself to supermodels) and was abandoned on her parents’ doorstep in a basket under mysterious circumstances. This is all told to us, there’s very little showing in this book unless it’s something to do with flowers or David’s abs (seriously, which 15 year old boy is ripped? They make Channel 5 documentaries about body building teens and not to be complimentary!), which get their own tacked on scene which is completely unnecessary to the story. I can’t call it a plot because nothing resembling any sort of conflict or anything interesting happens until about 280 pages in. So yeah, grab a pillow and some caramel shortbread.
4 chapters in something finally happens. Well, if you can call a zit a plot device. Typically for teen girls, Laurel worries about the blemish (my back looked like the Himalaya mountain range for most of my teenage years) but after her earlier shallow comments, reading her worries about this rapidly growing bump turning into “something ugly” whilst being quietly judgemental about girls with similar situations doesn’t exactly warm me to the leading ‘heroine.’ Eventually the bump turns out not to be cancerous or, God forbid, a zit, and soon it sprouts into a giant flower. I will relent a little here and say this was a pretty interesting take on the fairy mythos. At least it was enough to recapture my interest after the 5 chapters of non plot and characters that give Julian Sands hope in the personality and charisma department. It’s serviceable stuff but it’s not exactly a page turner unless you mean in the sense that you want to turn the pages just to get on with something else more important. Does she tell her parents? Of course not, that would require giving them an active role in the story! At least they actually seem to care, unlike Bella’s parents in Twilight who exist to serve no other purpose than to make sure child services aren’t called out. They’re pretty useless but they occasionally show some interest in their daughter. Instead, Laurel tells David, who views it with geekish glee (which was kind of cute, don’t judge me, scientists are hot!) and decides to do some experiments, where it emerges that Laurel is actually a plant. Yep, a plant. Somehow I can’t imagine the Twilight meadows scene being as devastatingly romantic for Twi-hards if Edward had been a plant:
“Say it Bella. Say it!”
“Poinsettia!”
Chapter 8 introduces us to the generic suspicious figure, here to buy Laurel’s family’s old house from them. How do we know he’s suspicious? Because he’s ugly. He doesn’t even say anything particularly devious but we know he’s evil and out to ruin Laurel’s life immediately because he’s unattractive. This particularly cruel element of the story only gets worse, believe me. And for those who are taking notes, now is the time to note the introduction of the unnecessary 3rd wheel in the most pointless love triangle ever! He’s a big smug but otherwise more of the same devastatingly gorgeous young male figures with no other personality traits, and his name is Tamani. He’s here to tell Laurel all about her true identity as a faerie. Laurel doesn’t believe him – having giant freaking plants grow out of your back is as normal a part of puberty as growing boobs and wanting to kill everyone for 4 days a month – and runs off.
We’re 128 pages in – 10 chapters – and there’s no sign of a plot or any more action beyond moping and boy perving. But now we’ve got Tamani on the scene and Laurel can’t deny the amazing, passionate connection they shared, despite barely speaking or doing anything. Y’ know – true love! To quote the phrase that left a million nerds fuming, “It’s magic, we don’t have to explain it!” When it comes to the revelation of Laurel’s true identity, it’s all described in a very tell-don’t- show manner; surely that’s writing rule 1 broken already? Tamani describes the faerie court and their particular purposes and then the most awkward part of the book until another 171 pages happens! It turns out the flower on Laurel’s back is the faerie equivalent of that kind of flower! Faeries use their blossom, found only in female faeries, to pollinate and reproduce! In their first scene together, Tamani accidentally got sparkly pollen all over Laurel’s arm, surely the faerie equivalent of premature ejaculation. He didn’t mean to do it of course; it had just been so long since he’d been around a woman that he couldn’t help himself. She was asking for it! Showing off that flower like it was a short skirt in a dingy nightclub! The extra kicker comes when Tamani takes glee in telling Laurel that faeries may use pollination for reproducing, but sex is for fun! Responsibility free sex; no risk of pregnancy or STDs other than maybe a little prick. Way to appeal to your base Pike. Seriously, this is more appealing to teen fantasies than free cupcakes! The topic of sex and puberty is mentioned but it’s never expanded upon. It just feels like Pike’s trying to be adult and ‘edgy’ for a YA audience even though the writing itself seems more suited to a pre-teen audience.
Along with his habit of fabulously coming over Laurel, it turns out that Laurel volunteered to be a faerie plant in the human world (because faeries age mentally much quicker than their bodies suggest, sort of like the uterus chewing demon child in reverse) and Tamani has been watching her for her entire life! As he says, it’s not spying, it’s helping! I wonder how distraught he was when there weren’t any opportunities to sneak into her room to watch her sleep. Laurel is also older than she thinks, and is 19 instead of 16. Instant age of consent!
About 250 pages in, we get some sort of plot twist, barely one, with Laurel’s dad falling extremely ill. With this comes Laurel and David’s overwhelming urge to investigate the ugly suspicious man who is going to buy the old Sewell house (the gateway to the faerie land of Avalon is on the land). 2 of the man, Barnes’s henchmen, are described as “downright grotesque”, continuing the theme of ugly = EVIL! Initiate slow clap sequence. We get a bit of action with the henchmen attempting to kill Laurel and David in a good old fashioned drowning. But luckily, Laurel’s oxygen producing breath saves David! Finally, a life saving snog, I’ve never seen that before...wait...
We get further tell-don’t-show description of more faerie mythology, combining King Arthur with Oberon from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (tell me that’s not a crossover you’ve love to see!) but it’s just shoved in there to give the illusion of Pike giving a damn about anything other than the extremely contrived love triangle. But along with this comes the scene that made this book turn from ‘meh’ material to ‘oh Christ, what the hell?’ Tamani goes into a description of the villains of the story, the trolls, in which the topic of symmetry is discussed. The more symmetrical one’s face is, the more beautiful they are, like Laurel and Tamani. Trolls lack this symmetry, ergo they are ugly. Not just ugly; hideous. The trolls lack any other defining characteristic beyond being ugly and stupid because apparently these things go hand in hand, and apparently their hideousness bothers the trolls themselves. Troll mothers are known to abandon their babies if they’re too ugly or “misshapen.”
“When evolution has given up on you, death is unavoidable.”
...
Seriously? Really Pike? Of all the elements of fail I expected to find in “Wings”, ableism was not one of them! So if one is ugly, mentally or physically impaired we should just give up on them because evolution has clearly tried to weed them out? Forgive me if I’m a bit sensitive here, I’m not a fan of such blatant displays of privilege in books aimed at an 11+ audience! To give the book credit, it took 300 pages before it really pissed me off which is 299 more than Twilight. Maybe Bella and Laurel could get together to drink Sprite and judge the less than perfect, they’d get along like a house on fire!
I’m just getting annoyed now, time to wrap this up. Blah blah blah, Laurel stops the trolls, Tamani is shot but he’s returned to Avalon where Laurel is presented with magic potion to cure her dad and a big arse diamond to give her parents enough money to be able to keep the old house and it’s all business as usual. Laurel even gets to kiss both guys. It turns out that Tamani was her former faerie BFF when they were precocious kiddies in Avalon and is hopelessly in love with her. I’d say Pike just shoved in the love triangle to make up for the lack of plot but she seems to have just shoved every plot element into the story without any real structure or thought. According to her blog, Pike wrote the book in 6 weeks and it shows.
Overall, the meh factor for this book was at an all time high/low. It was an easy enough read although there are a few moments where Pike tries to Meyer out on the dialogue. The mythos is interesting enough but never focused on, instead spending page after page telling us unnecessary things, shoving in covers to fill the plot holes with no care, and mooning over a love triangle that couldn’t be more contrived if it tried. The characters are dull and everything is handled in a serviceable but lifeless manner. The attempt to shove a plot in with the introduction of the ugly evil trolls just pissed me off; not only was it shallow and ableist, it was just plain lazy writing. Pike got a 4 book deal from this story so I guess there’s hope for us all. It’s often described as Twilight with faeries and it feels a lot like a Twilight inspired/rip-off. I can see how it would appeal to the Twilight crowd and it’s relatively undemanding stuff. I’ll probably forget all about it in the morning.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 9, 2017
I go to a lot of conventions and comic cons. While I'm there, I usually pick up a sampling of books from my fellow writers. Sometimes I am given free copies. I don't think I let that affect my reviews, but I like to be transparent about such things. This is one that I bought for the intriguing premise, and the charming author signed it to me.
As always, I wish to avoid spoilers, but as the back cover of the book reveals that Laurel has to deal that a blossom similar to wings is opening up on her back, I think I'll share that with you right away. Laurel is also a young woman with a mysterious past, who is trying to merge into normal high school life in a small town. She has always felt she was different, and now she will discover just how different she is. And how special.
This could have been a very formulaic tale about the teenage girl on the outskirts of high school society who discovers she is not only different but different in a wonderful way. Aprilynne Pike dodges that. Laurel will discover that her differences, while possibly marvelous, also put her in the way of great dangers. By the end of the book, first in a series, the reader can foresee that she is going to have to face some very difficult choices in the days to come. She is going to have to grope her way forward to find her destiny, and her survival.
This isn't a book where the happy ending is that everything was reset to the once normal life the protagonist enjoyed. First in the series Avalon.
As always, I wish to avoid spoilers, but as the back cover of the book reveals that Laurel has to deal that a blossom similar to wings is opening up on her back, I think I'll share that with you right away. Laurel is also a young woman with a mysterious past, who is trying to merge into normal high school life in a small town. She has always felt she was different, and now she will discover just how different she is. And how special.
This could have been a very formulaic tale about the teenage girl on the outskirts of high school society who discovers she is not only different but different in a wonderful way. Aprilynne Pike dodges that. Laurel will discover that her differences, while possibly marvelous, also put her in the way of great dangers. By the end of the book, first in a series, the reader can foresee that she is going to have to face some very difficult choices in the days to come. She is going to have to grope her way forward to find her destiny, and her survival.
This isn't a book where the happy ending is that everything was reset to the once normal life the protagonist enjoyed. First in the series Avalon.
May 30, 2009
A very intriguing take on faeries. However, I feel that not a lot happened in the first third of the novel; it was mostly Laurel finding out who and what she is. Though beautifully written, it seemed more of an intro to the next book than a novel in itself. Still, it kept me turning pages, the characters were well developed, and the love triangle inspired many aww moments. I'm anxious to see what will happen in the next book
December 9, 2016
I gave up on YA.
May 9, 2009
Wings was definitely a unique take on fairy mythology. And I finally get the significance of the cover now, which I have to say fits the novel perfectly.
I’m a huge fan of the Faery/Fairy/Fae... (was it is really?) genre, or rather sub-genre. I wasn’t surprised that I really liked this novel. Sensational plot line, really different than anything I’ve read. The first part of the novel moved a little slow for me. But once I became fully engrossed in the world that Pike created, I couldn’t get through the pages fast enough.
The writing was outstanding, it flowed really well. It’s one of those instances where you don’t realize your reading it’s so easy to read. Maybe that’s just something that happens to me personally, but I love when it does.
The characters were also really well depicted. Although we don’t know much about Laurel’s history, I still felt like I really knew her as a character, and even though Tamani’s presence in the novel is few and far between, he is probably my favorite character, which says a lot for Pike’s character development.
And then of course one of my personal favorite elements in any story.... the love triangle! I can’t wait to see more of that in the future novels, as far as I’m aware I believe there are to be three more, consisting of a four book series.... I could be wrong.
Overall, a exciting and beautifully written novel!
I’m a huge fan of the Faery/Fairy/Fae... (was it is really?) genre, or rather sub-genre. I wasn’t surprised that I really liked this novel. Sensational plot line, really different than anything I’ve read. The first part of the novel moved a little slow for me. But once I became fully engrossed in the world that Pike created, I couldn’t get through the pages fast enough.
The writing was outstanding, it flowed really well. It’s one of those instances where you don’t realize your reading it’s so easy to read. Maybe that’s just something that happens to me personally, but I love when it does.
The characters were also really well depicted. Although we don’t know much about Laurel’s history, I still felt like I really knew her as a character, and even though Tamani’s presence in the novel is few and far between, he is probably my favorite character, which says a lot for Pike’s character development.
And then of course one of my personal favorite elements in any story.... the love triangle! I can’t wait to see more of that in the future novels, as far as I’m aware I believe there are to be three more, consisting of a four book series.... I could be wrong.
Overall, a exciting and beautifully written novel!
March 13, 2011
TBR Reduction Challange #5 (Kirsten)
Alright guys, I’m throwing in the towel. I just can’t get over the fact that the girl has a giant flower growing out of her back. Ew. I mean, eeeew. Yeah, and then there are some things that just plain annoy me. Dialogues like this one for example:
...It took her a few seconds to find her voice.
"Who are you?"
He paused and studied her with a strange, unflinching look in his eyes.
"Well?" Laurel prompted.
"You don’t know me, do you?" He asked.
Um, I don’t know about you but I think the question "Who are you" kind of implies that she does not know him. *headdesk*
What I have to admit, though, is that this book is quite funny. Unintentionally so, but still funny.
Statements like "Don’t worry, I’ll keep my distance from your blossom." had me in tears because I was laughing so hard. (For more on that, check out Arlene’s awesome review)
I’ve read 112 pages now and I’m still not hooked and I just don’t feel like finishing it. Furthermore the whole plant thing makes it incredibly hard, if not impossible for me to take any of this seriously. I’m bursting out laughing every other sentence.
I don't know, maybe I would have gotten used to the plant thing if I had kept on reading but as I said, I don't feel like it so for now Wings is going to find its way back into the depths of my shelves where it has been hiding out for the past year. Thanks for the push anyway Kirsten!
Alright guys, I’m throwing in the towel. I just can’t get over the fact that the girl has a giant flower growing out of her back. Ew. I mean, eeeew. Yeah, and then there are some things that just plain annoy me. Dialogues like this one for example:
...It took her a few seconds to find her voice.
"Who are you?"
He paused and studied her with a strange, unflinching look in his eyes.
"Well?" Laurel prompted.
"You don’t know me, do you?" He asked.
Um, I don’t know about you but I think the question "Who are you" kind of implies that she does not know him. *headdesk*
What I have to admit, though, is that this book is quite funny. Unintentionally so, but still funny.
Statements like "Don’t worry, I’ll keep my distance from your blossom." had me in tears because I was laughing so hard. (For more on that, check out Arlene’s awesome review)
I’ve read 112 pages now and I’m still not hooked and I just don’t feel like finishing it. Furthermore the whole plant thing makes it incredibly hard, if not impossible for me to take any of this seriously. I’m bursting out laughing every other sentence.
I don't know, maybe I would have gotten used to the plant thing if I had kept on reading but as I said, I don't feel like it so for now Wings is going to find its way back into the depths of my shelves where it has been hiding out for the past year. Thanks for the push anyway Kirsten!
February 13, 2017
OH MY GOD. OH MY GOD. UM. THIS IS THE FIRST AND ONLY FAIRIE BOOK I'VE READ THAT I LIKED. AND I FLIPPIN LOVED IT
July 17, 2018
I remember reading this book a few years ago and really loving it. I also read the sequel back then but I never really finished the series.
Now I'm gonna finish it.
This was such a quick and enjoyable read. Although it has many tropes that we all hate, such as love triangles, I still found myself enticed by the story.
I am so excited to get the rest of the series in the mail so I can continue!!
Now I'm gonna finish it.
This was such a quick and enjoyable read. Although it has many tropes that we all hate, such as love triangles, I still found myself enticed by the story.
I am so excited to get the rest of the series in the mail so I can continue!!
May 10, 2009
What Meyer has done to vampires, Pike has done to faeries. This book is sweet, funny, sensually and beautifully told. She gives every single character their justice and purpose. Amazingly composed. This has got to be a part of a series. I need more.
Read
April 20, 2012Most of my friends rated this book one star, and some friends even have it on shelves to avoid... but there's just something about it that I really enjoyed...
Although Laurel is a TERRIBLE heroine, and I went into this book with quite low expectations (see my 'morbid curiosity shelf, reserved for books I have heard terrible things about but still have a desire to read) and the only reason I picked it up was because I saw it on the shelf in my local library... I actually enjoyed the book.
Aprilynne Pike first turned me off reading ‘Wings’ when she blurbed Kiersten White’s Paranormalcy basically saying that she preferred the rapey stalker to the nice boy in that book’s love triangle – probably because he was a ‘hot’ faerie – and I stayed away from this book for years. I’ve put books down because of who blurbed them, and I’ve picked books up due to blurbs from authors I trust. Although Stephenie Meyer is a friend of Pike’s (and I hear recommended her to her own superstar agent) and I’m not a huge Meyer fan, I do actually trust her taste in paranormal romance – she did, after all, write only the most popular paranormal romance ever which, it mostly seems, too many other PNRs try to emulate. One of the things that drew me to Wings was the idea of the girl being the monster, not the boy. I was already reading Hereafter, although that was starting to grate on me, so I picked up Wings…
…and promptly read about half of it in one sitting.
It was very addictive. Although Laurel’s a despicable heroine – she’s perfect in every way, clearly has anorexia although no one thinks it’s out of the ordinary, compares herself favourably to supermodels and is generally more beautiful, graceful, and smarter and more modest than everyone else – she’s also incredibly judgemental, which totally annoyed the crap out of me. When Laurel meets a new boy and notices his straight teeth, she immediately assumes he’s had braces, even though she runs her tongue over her own 'naturally straight teeth’. If hers are so perfect, why can’t anyone else’s be natural? She meets a boy with brilliant green eyes and immediately assumes he’s wearing contact lenses. And even though Laurel is a perfect fragile princess whom everyone adores, she’s still self-conscious enough to want to hide away even though she clearly has nothing to hide.
Laurel’s blossom didn’t seem to last for a very long part of the book. Most of the plot up until now was very solid – and the writing was for the most part more than bearable – So that was weird.
One of the other things I liked was that the romance developed by trying to figure out what the heck Laurel was, and the villain wasn’t just tacked on in the last quarter of the book to create a climax. It was woven all the way through As if Laurel wasn’t perfect enough.
I think Laurel could have redeemed herself just a bit with me if she’d been able to defeat the bad guy herself. In the end she couldn’t even do that and even though she’s the monster of the book, she still had to be rescued. My inner feminist fumes. It appears in PNR that no matter if the girl is the human or the monster, she’ll still need to be rescued. I know, I know – I need to switch genres if I want to read about girls who can actually look after themselves – but still.
Overall the writing wasn’t perfect but it was easy to read, and I was in a relatively good mood when I read the book so I just laughed at all the stupid stuff instead of getting all knotted up and ranting and raving like I did about Hush, Hush. I think out of all the hyped PNRs I’ve read, Wings has the strongest plot, and Laurel is not as bad as Nora and not as stupid as Luce, and more capable than Bella. It’s not the best book I’ve read and I still hate Laurel – not because she’s a perfect Mary Sue but because she’s so damned judgemental and convinced no one could even be as perfect as her and I totally don’t buy her whole ‘I hate being the centre of attention’ thing. However, I enjoyed it enough to want to read the other books in the trilogy and I’m not even dreading it. Pike doesn’t need ‘another chance’ with me – I like her writing, if not her heroine.
It’s entertaining fluff and if you like PNR you’ll most probably like this. If you’re not a huge fan of PNR, then this will probably be hit or miss – it just happened to tickle my fancy at the time.
Happy reading!
Although Laurel is a TERRIBLE heroine, and I went into this book with quite low expectations (see my 'morbid curiosity shelf, reserved for books I have heard terrible things about but still have a desire to read) and the only reason I picked it up was because I saw it on the shelf in my local library... I actually enjoyed the book.
Aprilynne Pike first turned me off reading ‘Wings’ when she blurbed Kiersten White’s Paranormalcy basically saying that she preferred the rapey stalker to the nice boy in that book’s love triangle – probably because he was a ‘hot’ faerie – and I stayed away from this book for years. I’ve put books down because of who blurbed them, and I’ve picked books up due to blurbs from authors I trust. Although Stephenie Meyer is a friend of Pike’s (and I hear recommended her to her own superstar agent) and I’m not a huge Meyer fan, I do actually trust her taste in paranormal romance – she did, after all, write only the most popular paranormal romance ever which, it mostly seems, too many other PNRs try to emulate. One of the things that drew me to Wings was the idea of the girl being the monster, not the boy. I was already reading Hereafter, although that was starting to grate on me, so I picked up Wings…
…and promptly read about half of it in one sitting.
It was very addictive. Although Laurel’s a despicable heroine – she’s perfect in every way, clearly has anorexia although no one thinks it’s out of the ordinary, compares herself favourably to supermodels and is generally more beautiful, graceful, and smarter and more modest than everyone else – she’s also incredibly judgemental, which totally annoyed the crap out of me. When Laurel meets a new boy and notices his straight teeth, she immediately assumes he’s had braces, even though she runs her tongue over her own 'naturally straight teeth’. If hers are so perfect, why can’t anyone else’s be natural? She meets a boy with brilliant green eyes and immediately assumes he’s wearing contact lenses. And even though Laurel is a perfect fragile princess whom everyone adores, she’s still self-conscious enough to want to hide away even though she clearly has nothing to hide.
Laurel’s blossom didn’t seem to last for a very long part of the book. Most of the plot up until now was very solid – and the writing was for the most part more than bearable – So that was weird.
One of the other things I liked was that the romance developed by trying to figure out what the heck Laurel was, and the villain wasn’t just tacked on in the last quarter of the book to create a climax. It was woven all the way through As if Laurel wasn’t perfect enough.
I think Laurel could have redeemed herself just a bit with me if she’d been able to defeat the bad guy herself. In the end she couldn’t even do that and even though she’s the monster of the book, she still had to be rescued. My inner feminist fumes. It appears in PNR that no matter if the girl is the human or the monster, she’ll still need to be rescued. I know, I know – I need to switch genres if I want to read about girls who can actually look after themselves – but still.
Overall the writing wasn’t perfect but it was easy to read, and I was in a relatively good mood when I read the book so I just laughed at all the stupid stuff instead of getting all knotted up and ranting and raving like I did about Hush, Hush. I think out of all the hyped PNRs I’ve read, Wings has the strongest plot, and Laurel is not as bad as Nora and not as stupid as Luce, and more capable than Bella. It’s not the best book I’ve read and I still hate Laurel – not because she’s a perfect Mary Sue but because she’s so damned judgemental and convinced no one could even be as perfect as her and I totally don’t buy her whole ‘I hate being the centre of attention’ thing. However, I enjoyed it enough to want to read the other books in the trilogy and I’m not even dreading it. Pike doesn’t need ‘another chance’ with me – I like her writing, if not her heroine.
It’s entertaining fluff and if you like PNR you’ll most probably like this. If you’re not a huge fan of PNR, then this will probably be hit or miss – it just happened to tickle my fancy at the time.
Happy reading!
February 24, 2009
Reviewed by Marta Morrison for TeensReadToo.com
What happens when you find out that you are different. Not just a little different but really DIFFERENT?!
Laurel finds herself in public school for the first time when she is a sophomore. She has been homeschooled in a small cabin in the forest. Her parents moved to Crescent City, in Northern California, about an hour away from her cabin to open a bookstore.
At her high school Laurel meets David, and he invites her to join his group of friends. He also becomes her best friend.
As she is getting settled into her new life, she gets a bump on her back - which grows bigger and bigger until she sprouts a pretty blue blossom. This blossom makes her look like she has wings.
She manages to hide it from her family and the people at school, but she and David begin to investigate. He looks at cells of her blossom and her cheeks and comes to the conclusion that she is made of plant cells.
Laurel goes back to her cabin home in search of answers. There she meets Tamani, a gorgeous young man who tells her that she is a fairy. She has been helping the fairies guard a secret that is by her cabin home.
Later, her dad takes ill and Laurel and David risk their lives fighting trolls, who are trying to acquire Laurel's forest home. These trolls are scary! They are big, strong, and the main one is smart.
WINGS is the first of four books, and it leaves us with Laurel living two different lives. Should she go back to her fairy life with Tamani, or stay and guard her adoptive parents and be with David, who Laurel also has feelings for?
I really loved this book. It had everything: love, chases, close escapes, dramatic choices, and lots of magic. The writing was very good, and at some points I had to put down the book just because I was so nervous for the characters, which for me means that I was totally involved in the story.
Laurel is someone who I would want to be my best friend. David is also fantastic. He is what I would love to meet and have in my life. He is accepting, brave, and extremely helpful. Tamani is strong, intense, and sexy! What a choice!
I highly recommend this series. It is fun and very believable. Go now and buy your copy of WINGS!
What happens when you find out that you are different. Not just a little different but really DIFFERENT?!
Laurel finds herself in public school for the first time when she is a sophomore. She has been homeschooled in a small cabin in the forest. Her parents moved to Crescent City, in Northern California, about an hour away from her cabin to open a bookstore.
At her high school Laurel meets David, and he invites her to join his group of friends. He also becomes her best friend.
As she is getting settled into her new life, she gets a bump on her back - which grows bigger and bigger until she sprouts a pretty blue blossom. This blossom makes her look like she has wings.
She manages to hide it from her family and the people at school, but she and David begin to investigate. He looks at cells of her blossom and her cheeks and comes to the conclusion that she is made of plant cells.
Laurel goes back to her cabin home in search of answers. There she meets Tamani, a gorgeous young man who tells her that she is a fairy. She has been helping the fairies guard a secret that is by her cabin home.
Later, her dad takes ill and Laurel and David risk their lives fighting trolls, who are trying to acquire Laurel's forest home. These trolls are scary! They are big, strong, and the main one is smart.
WINGS is the first of four books, and it leaves us with Laurel living two different lives. Should she go back to her fairy life with Tamani, or stay and guard her adoptive parents and be with David, who Laurel also has feelings for?
I really loved this book. It had everything: love, chases, close escapes, dramatic choices, and lots of magic. The writing was very good, and at some points I had to put down the book just because I was so nervous for the characters, which for me means that I was totally involved in the story.
Laurel is someone who I would want to be my best friend. David is also fantastic. He is what I would love to meet and have in my life. He is accepting, brave, and extremely helpful. Tamani is strong, intense, and sexy! What a choice!
I highly recommend this series. It is fun and very believable. Go now and buy your copy of WINGS!
January 3, 2009
Though I haven't read "Twilight" due to my abhorrence of anything vampire, this may be the fairy equivalent. Main character discovers she's a plant fairy, does battle with trolls, and must decide between two love interests, one a human and the other a fairy. Compelling story!
Read
October 4, 2013By the end I was definitely sucked in. It is a very different take on fairies, very interesting. I'm definitely curious to see how this series turns out...
June 29, 2020
Read this back in 2009 (age 16) and I remember liking it a lot, and recommending it to my best friend (we had a Book Club of 2 xD - still do actually).
I remember dissecting Laurel's interactions with David and Tamani and trying to figure out who she would choose.
It was an ok book in 2009, but if I hadn't these nostalgic memories (not of the story itself, but of passing books back and forth with my best friend and our friendship), I don't think I would've tolerated it as well as I did now, 11 years later.
Laurel is the Mary Suest Mary Sue to ever Mary Sue. David and Tamani are nothing to write home about. I'm glad the love triangles stayed (mostly) in the 2000s. There's no real character development or real plot to speak of really, but this is not the worst book I've read this year. That honor belongs to Marked, and honestly, I don't think I'll be rating another book 1 star any time soon - not if in doing so I'm saying it's as bad as Marked.
So 2 stars for the nostalgia factor. It's also not riddled with problematic stuff that was rampant for it's time. There were a few jarring comments that would not fly in a 2020 pub, but that was to be expected.
I started the sequel right away, because I own the whole series. Let's see what happens.
Just a quick trigger warning: Laurel's parent's are anti vaxxers - it's somewhat unclear if it's due to the overaching 'plot' (I'm using that word quite liberally here) but it still sets my blood boiling either way, 'cause you know. Science and kids not needlessly getting sick or dying are things I care about.
I remember dissecting Laurel's interactions with David and Tamani and trying to figure out who she would choose.
It was an ok book in 2009, but if I hadn't these nostalgic memories (not of the story itself, but of passing books back and forth with my best friend and our friendship), I don't think I would've tolerated it as well as I did now, 11 years later.
Laurel is the Mary Suest Mary Sue to ever Mary Sue. David and Tamani are nothing to write home about. I'm glad the love triangles stayed (mostly) in the 2000s. There's no real character development or real plot to speak of really, but this is not the worst book I've read this year. That honor belongs to Marked, and honestly, I don't think I'll be rating another book 1 star any time soon - not if in doing so I'm saying it's as bad as Marked.
So 2 stars for the nostalgia factor. It's also not riddled with problematic stuff that was rampant for it's time. There were a few jarring comments that would not fly in a 2020 pub, but that was to be expected.
I started the sequel right away, because I own the whole series. Let's see what happens.
Just a quick trigger warning: Laurel's parent's are anti vaxxers - it's somewhat unclear if it's due to the overaching 'plot' (I'm using that word quite liberally here) but it still sets my blood boiling either way, 'cause you know. Science and kids not needlessly getting sick or dying are things I care about.
March 27, 2024
Really wanted to like this. Laurel is a nice kid but the decision to give her what sounded like an eating disorder was odd. There had to be a more creative way to show she was supernatural than that like her growing wings after a first kiss. I’m not the target audience but still. There was so much I liked about the set up, but why the eating disorder stuff?
October 3, 2016
Edited@03/10/2016:
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to inform you guys some brave people at DAS_SPORKING community have taken up the hard work of sporking Wings, chapter by chapter : http://das-sporking.livejournal.com/1...
Note: had just found out Aprilynne Pike's remark on book reviews. Wow, what an it.
Review: Wings by Aprilynne Pike
The story begins when a homeschooled young girl, Laurel moves to a new town with her parents and starts going to highschool for the very first time, later she discovers something isn't quite right with herself and she must get to the bottom of the mystery of her own origin with the help of David, her new friend.
I must confess, Wings by Aprilynne Pike is one of those annoying, formulized YA novels which I can't bring myself to finish. But I really should have known better when I saw the recommendation from Stephenie Meyer on the backcover. =__=
Alright, I know that Stephenie Meyer has the right to enjoy good books like everyone else, maybe I shouldn't be too judging when I saw books with Meyer's recommendation on them, but the all-too-familiar settling of an awkward new girl in a new school, the same-old, same-old love triangle, and the Mary Sue 'heroine' in Wings, reminds me too much of the poorly written soap opera that is Twilight.
A lot of YA novels have 'new student in a new school setting' and love triangle, still the characters in Wings are so poorly constructed that I feel absolutely nothing for them.
The heroine Laurel is too perfect to be neither likable nor realistic--when I said 'perfect' it's in an extremely narrow and mainstream sense. What the author had projected in her 'heroine' is just a very shallow kind of 'perfection' based mostly on appearance. Look, see. Laurel is outstandingly beautiful, she's smart, she self-learnt how to play a guitar without being taught, she moves with dancer's grace even having taken no lesson (a description which I, as a person who had danced regularly for years, found hilarious), she doesn't even have a single acne upon her skin, she captures a nice, handsome boy's interest the very first day she goes to high school, she doesn't need to worry about gaining weight because she doesn't even have to eat anything but a few mouthful of vegetable! Oh come on! Of course heroines can be beautiful, smart and graceful but by making a heroine so 'flawless' like Laurel does, is ways too cliché and unrealistic. Give me a freaking break!
Furthermore, for 15 long years Laurel never once realize she doesn't have pulse, heartbeats and the color of her blood is different from normal human being. Oh my goodness, dear Miss Pike are you kidding me!?
The author tells us Laurel used to be homeschooled by her mother but I found her to be unreasonably sheltered and ignorant. Okay, I have never met anyone who was homeschooled but I guess being homeschooled surely doesn't mean you are isolated from other kids and have zero interaction with them, right? But from Miss Pike's description, it looks like Laurel had not a single friend back in her hometown, her entire childhood was spent being a shut-in and David is the very first friend she had ever made. I also found all these details hard to believe in.
Plus Laurel also dislikes her new school because the halls have no widows, people are talking loudly and students are making out at lockers. Oh, what a delicate princess. Oh, what a whiny.
*plot spoiler warning*
Laurel's love interest, David is just as much a cardboard cutout. He's nice and caring, but there's nothing more about him. It also looks unrealistic that when Laurel tells him she has massive flower petals growing down her back like a pair of wings and she might be a faerie, he just accepts all these without any second thought? It is never explained why he can accept all these supernatural things so calmly, if it were mentioned that, for example, David is a fan of Sci-Fi or fairy folklore, then it might be the explanation for his accepting attitude, but no, we are given no explanation.
As to the other love interest, Tamani; I have little to say because by the time he shows up, I had already lost interest. And Laurel is smitten with him during the very first time they met because he is SO beautiful, sexy and mysterious. Oh……I think I'd seen the same YA's sentimental love at first sight mumbo jumbo for far too many times.
The idea of faeries being a form of plants is supposed to be an original idea, but the way this idea is played out makes it look like a big joke. Faeries, a bunch of walking and talking humanlike plants, and they eat fruits and vegetable—namely other plants, for survival? This made me laugh so hard when I read it.
*end of plot spoiler*
The writing isn't so bad but there's nothing that keeps me interested. The rest of the plot is pretty predictable, so I couldn't stand the boredom anymore in the middle of the book and had to give in and jumped to the ending to know what happens in the end. I hear that there are three more books for the Wings series, but I don't think I will go near them anytime soon.
Review edited and enlarged at 13/08/2012, written after I finally brought myself to read the entire book.
The fairies are being stripped down to be the shallow, sparkling, airy, *unearthly beautiful* supernatural creatures; most of the other sidhe myth elements are just...gone. But I really dislike how the concept of fairies being treated like this. I mean, you can't present 'fairies' like this anymore than you can insist vampires don't drink human blood and would sparkle under the sun, not anymore than you can show me a piece of crap and insist that it's not crap but tasty chocolate.
*plot spoiler warning*
Later on, David and Laurel did an 'experiment' to test if Laurel really is a plant. David did it by holding his own breath than blowed it into Laurel's mouth, so when Laurel exhaled it back to his mouth, he could test whether she would exhale oxygen instead of carbon dioxide. Okay, I like the idea of David doing experiment to test what Laurel really is, but the way this 'experiment' is done, is a big insult to what we'd usually call scientific experiments.
The villains in the story is later being revealed as the evil trolls, why they want to attack Avalon (homeland of fairies) so badly? Simple. Because they wanted the treasures in it. Yes, it really is all about the treasures, and that makes the trolls a bunch of purposeless villains.
We are told that the evil trolls wanted to seize the land owned by Laurel's parents, because the Gate to Avalon happened to locate on said land. And what did the trolls do to seize the land? Oh well, they did it by offering Laurel's mom a lot of money to buy the land and poisoned Laurel's dad. (did I mention that the trolls' plan fails to sound frightening?) And what the fairies had done to stop this evil plan? No, the fairy's guards were so clueless about the whole land deal that they only realized something was wrong after Laurel and her parents moved out. OMG........I just need to facepalm. Those guards were supposedly protecting one of the most important gateways to their sanctuary, and they did such a terrible job! How can I take those fairies serious!? By the way, if the trolls can try to buy the precious land from Laurel's mom, why can't the fairies make a similar offer earlier on? Are they stupid or something?
It's also revealed that Laurel was sent to her adoptive parents as a changeling because the fairies wanted the couple to take her in so Laurel can be her parents' heir and then in turn inheriting their land when they die; to make sure the land would be in the fairies' hands in a long run. I must admit it is an reasonable plan, but the whole thing sounds too manipulative and self-serving, it also contradict the theory that the fairies are the 'good' guys.
Also, I found the characters in the story to be very stereotyped: every 'good' characters are slim, young and good-looking, on the other hand the villains are ugly, deformed and strange-looking. You know what? That kind of setting and morality looks like it's taken straight from Disney cartoons. Take Disney's The Little Mermaid as an example, Little Mermaid is fair-skinned, young, pretty, feminine and slim, the evil Sea Witch is old, fat, unpretty, dark-skinned and white haired; and do I have to remind you that The Little Mermaid is a cartoon from decades ago? It's difficult to believe a Young Adult novel published in the 21st century ( which targets the teenage audience), can have such kind of backward morality (pretty=good, ugly=evil), without any criticism on the prejudice against homely looking people and our look-obsessive pop culture. *sighs* Instead of raising any criticism, the author seems to just go along with the prejudice. How very educational she is being.
Eventually Laurel's parents found out their daughter was a fairy, and they just okayed it? That's how people would react after they heard that their adopted daughter is from another species and the purpose of her being sent to live with them is to make sure she can inherit their land later on!? Wouldn't all these set off all sort of alarm bells in their minds?
By the way, the fairies saved Laurel's dad, then offered her parents a large piece of raw diamond in exchange of them making Laurel the rightful heir of the land. I have nothing against the fairies paying the humans off, but it makes me wonder, in the modern human society, if a person shows up in a jewel shop with a piece of large, *unrecorded* diamond, I'm sure instead of the shop owner handing out a briefcase of cash in exchange for the diamond, said person would more likely be arrested, under suspicion of stealing.
Things finally speeds up when Laurel and David got caught by the trolls, I like how Laurel managed to save herself and David from under the river.
*end of plot spoiler*
But the ending is just lukewarm to me. To sum up, Aprilynne Pike as a new author has some original ideas, but sadly her story isn't well excised: the characters are two dimensional at best, the villains are flat characters, the 'heroine' is an obvious Mary Sue, there's a lot of 'tell, not show' in the story, some of the characters' actions and decisions fail to make sense. But if you can overlook those flaws, you might enjoy this story, I don't know.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to inform you guys some brave people at DAS_SPORKING community have taken up the hard work of sporking Wings, chapter by chapter : http://das-sporking.livejournal.com/1...
Note: had just found out Aprilynne Pike's remark on book reviews. Wow, what an it.
Review: Wings by Aprilynne Pike
The story begins when a homeschooled young girl, Laurel moves to a new town with her parents and starts going to highschool for the very first time, later she discovers something isn't quite right with herself and she must get to the bottom of the mystery of her own origin with the help of David, her new friend.
I must confess, Wings by Aprilynne Pike is one of those annoying, formulized YA novels which I can't bring myself to finish. But I really should have known better when I saw the recommendation from Stephenie Meyer on the backcover. =__=
Alright, I know that Stephenie Meyer has the right to enjoy good books like everyone else, maybe I shouldn't be too judging when I saw books with Meyer's recommendation on them, but the all-too-familiar settling of an awkward new girl in a new school, the same-old, same-old love triangle, and the Mary Sue 'heroine' in Wings, reminds me too much of the poorly written soap opera that is Twilight.
A lot of YA novels have 'new student in a new school setting' and love triangle, still the characters in Wings are so poorly constructed that I feel absolutely nothing for them.
The heroine Laurel is too perfect to be neither likable nor realistic--when I said 'perfect' it's in an extremely narrow and mainstream sense. What the author had projected in her 'heroine' is just a very shallow kind of 'perfection' based mostly on appearance. Look, see. Laurel is outstandingly beautiful, she's smart, she self-learnt how to play a guitar without being taught, she moves with dancer's grace even having taken no lesson (a description which I, as a person who had danced regularly for years, found hilarious), she doesn't even have a single acne upon her skin, she captures a nice, handsome boy's interest the very first day she goes to high school, she doesn't need to worry about gaining weight because she doesn't even have to eat anything but a few mouthful of vegetable! Oh come on! Of course heroines can be beautiful, smart and graceful but by making a heroine so 'flawless' like Laurel does, is ways too cliché and unrealistic. Give me a freaking break!
Furthermore, for 15 long years Laurel never once realize she doesn't have pulse, heartbeats and the color of her blood is different from normal human being. Oh my goodness, dear Miss Pike are you kidding me!?
The author tells us Laurel used to be homeschooled by her mother but I found her to be unreasonably sheltered and ignorant. Okay, I have never met anyone who was homeschooled but I guess being homeschooled surely doesn't mean you are isolated from other kids and have zero interaction with them, right? But from Miss Pike's description, it looks like Laurel had not a single friend back in her hometown, her entire childhood was spent being a shut-in and David is the very first friend she had ever made. I also found all these details hard to believe in.
Plus Laurel also dislikes her new school because the halls have no widows, people are talking loudly and students are making out at lockers. Oh, what a delicate princess. Oh, what a whiny.
*plot spoiler warning*
Laurel's love interest, David is just as much a cardboard cutout. He's nice and caring, but there's nothing more about him. It also looks unrealistic that when Laurel tells him she has massive flower petals growing down her back like a pair of wings and she might be a faerie, he just accepts all these without any second thought? It is never explained why he can accept all these supernatural things so calmly, if it were mentioned that, for example, David is a fan of Sci-Fi or fairy folklore, then it might be the explanation for his accepting attitude, but no, we are given no explanation.
As to the other love interest, Tamani; I have little to say because by the time he shows up, I had already lost interest. And Laurel is smitten with him during the very first time they met because he is SO beautiful, sexy and mysterious. Oh……I think I'd seen the same YA's sentimental love at first sight mumbo jumbo for far too many times.
The idea of faeries being a form of plants is supposed to be an original idea, but the way this idea is played out makes it look like a big joke. Faeries, a bunch of walking and talking humanlike plants, and they eat fruits and vegetable—namely other plants, for survival? This made me laugh so hard when I read it.
*end of plot spoiler*
The writing isn't so bad but there's nothing that keeps me interested. The rest of the plot is pretty predictable, so I couldn't stand the boredom anymore in the middle of the book and had to give in and jumped to the ending to know what happens in the end. I hear that there are three more books for the Wings series, but I don't think I will go near them anytime soon.
Review edited and enlarged at 13/08/2012, written after I finally brought myself to read the entire book.
The fairies are being stripped down to be the shallow, sparkling, airy, *unearthly beautiful* supernatural creatures; most of the other sidhe myth elements are just...gone. But I really dislike how the concept of fairies being treated like this. I mean, you can't present 'fairies' like this anymore than you can insist vampires don't drink human blood and would sparkle under the sun, not anymore than you can show me a piece of crap and insist that it's not crap but tasty chocolate.
*plot spoiler warning*
Later on, David and Laurel did an 'experiment' to test if Laurel really is a plant. David did it by holding his own breath than blowed it into Laurel's mouth, so when Laurel exhaled it back to his mouth, he could test whether she would exhale oxygen instead of carbon dioxide. Okay, I like the idea of David doing experiment to test what Laurel really is, but the way this 'experiment' is done, is a big insult to what we'd usually call scientific experiments.
The villains in the story is later being revealed as the evil trolls, why they want to attack Avalon (homeland of fairies) so badly? Simple. Because they wanted the treasures in it. Yes, it really is all about the treasures, and that makes the trolls a bunch of purposeless villains.
We are told that the evil trolls wanted to seize the land owned by Laurel's parents, because the Gate to Avalon happened to locate on said land. And what did the trolls do to seize the land? Oh well, they did it by offering Laurel's mom a lot of money to buy the land and poisoned Laurel's dad. (did I mention that the trolls' plan fails to sound frightening?) And what the fairies had done to stop this evil plan? No, the fairy's guards were so clueless about the whole land deal that they only realized something was wrong after Laurel and her parents moved out. OMG........I just need to facepalm. Those guards were supposedly protecting one of the most important gateways to their sanctuary, and they did such a terrible job! How can I take those fairies serious!? By the way, if the trolls can try to buy the precious land from Laurel's mom, why can't the fairies make a similar offer earlier on? Are they stupid or something?
It's also revealed that Laurel was sent to her adoptive parents as a changeling because the fairies wanted the couple to take her in so Laurel can be her parents' heir and then in turn inheriting their land when they die; to make sure the land would be in the fairies' hands in a long run. I must admit it is an reasonable plan, but the whole thing sounds too manipulative and self-serving, it also contradict the theory that the fairies are the 'good' guys.
Also, I found the characters in the story to be very stereotyped: every 'good' characters are slim, young and good-looking, on the other hand the villains are ugly, deformed and strange-looking. You know what? That kind of setting and morality looks like it's taken straight from Disney cartoons. Take Disney's The Little Mermaid as an example, Little Mermaid is fair-skinned, young, pretty, feminine and slim, the evil Sea Witch is old, fat, unpretty, dark-skinned and white haired; and do I have to remind you that The Little Mermaid is a cartoon from decades ago? It's difficult to believe a Young Adult novel published in the 21st century ( which targets the teenage audience), can have such kind of backward morality (pretty=good, ugly=evil), without any criticism on the prejudice against homely looking people and our look-obsessive pop culture. *sighs* Instead of raising any criticism, the author seems to just go along with the prejudice. How very educational she is being.
Eventually Laurel's parents found out their daughter was a fairy, and they just okayed it? That's how people would react after they heard that their adopted daughter is from another species and the purpose of her being sent to live with them is to make sure she can inherit their land later on!? Wouldn't all these set off all sort of alarm bells in their minds?
By the way, the fairies saved Laurel's dad, then offered her parents a large piece of raw diamond in exchange of them making Laurel the rightful heir of the land. I have nothing against the fairies paying the humans off, but it makes me wonder, in the modern human society, if a person shows up in a jewel shop with a piece of large, *unrecorded* diamond, I'm sure instead of the shop owner handing out a briefcase of cash in exchange for the diamond, said person would more likely be arrested, under suspicion of stealing.
Things finally speeds up when Laurel and David got caught by the trolls, I like how Laurel managed to save herself and David from under the river.
*end of plot spoiler*
But the ending is just lukewarm to me. To sum up, Aprilynne Pike as a new author has some original ideas, but sadly her story isn't well excised: the characters are two dimensional at best, the villains are flat characters, the 'heroine' is an obvious Mary Sue, there's a lot of 'tell, not show' in the story, some of the characters' actions and decisions fail to make sense. But if you can overlook those flaws, you might enjoy this story, I don't know.
Read
August 31, 2010I love the very original (for me) faerie mythology that Pike has created in this book. And have to say I'm Team Tamani.
May 3, 2020
Just as good as ever! These characters are so dear to me, and even though I've read Wings, like, 4 times now the plot never gets boring!
July 25, 2023
The story revolved around Laurel, a seemingly ordinary teenage girl who discovered she was actually a faerie, when delicate petal wings blossomed from her back.
The book explored themes of identity, loyalty, and the sacrifices one must make when caught between two worlds.
I loved her relationships with her human friend David and faerie guardian Tamani, it added a bit of an intrigue to the narrative.
Overall, it was an okay read. 3 stars.
The book explored themes of identity, loyalty, and the sacrifices one must make when caught between two worlds.
I loved her relationships with her human friend David and faerie guardian Tamani, it added a bit of an intrigue to the narrative.
Overall, it was an okay read. 3 stars.
July 28, 2010
3.5 - 4 Stars
Wings was a fast and enjoyable read. I was struggling with how to rate it, though, as I'm somewhere between "Liked it" and "Really liked It".
This is a debut novel by Aprilynne Pike and has an endorsement by Stephenie Meyer as "A Remarkable Debut". While not quite remarkable for me, it was certainly a good enough start to a series that I am interested to read the next book.
If you want to read a twist on the faerie story, and if you enjoy love triangles, then you may want to check this out. Since I haven't read any other YA books specifically on faeries yet, though I have Lament and Wicked Lovely waiting on my shelf, I can't compare this book to other faerie/fairy/fae/fey (let me count the ways?) stories. Though from what I do know about faeries (and having read some other reviews), this book has a very interesting "twist" on the faerie story.
Wings is the story of 15 year old Laurel who has been homeschooled up until this point and has started her first year of high school. Along with adapting to high school, Laurel undergoes some surprising changes and learns that she is not who she thought she was.
My favourite part of the book was the character of David, Laurel's best friend. He is so sweet, logical, patient and understanding. I really like him. And then, on the other hand, there is Tamani, who ignites chaotic feelings in Laurel, that she's never felt before. I am Team David. Though I feel I haven't got the chance to really know Tamani yet, so who knows? *shrugs* I had a few issues with some repetitiveness of the dialogue in the beginning of this book, and I got a bit frustrated with Laurel, at certain points, but I do look forward to reading the next books in the series to see where this goes:
and
Wings was a fast and enjoyable read. I was struggling with how to rate it, though, as I'm somewhere between "Liked it" and "Really liked It".
This is a debut novel by Aprilynne Pike and has an endorsement by Stephenie Meyer as "A Remarkable Debut". While not quite remarkable for me, it was certainly a good enough start to a series that I am interested to read the next book.
If you want to read a twist on the faerie story, and if you enjoy love triangles, then you may want to check this out. Since I haven't read any other YA books specifically on faeries yet, though I have Lament and Wicked Lovely waiting on my shelf, I can't compare this book to other faerie/fairy/fae/fey (let me count the ways?) stories. Though from what I do know about faeries (and having read some other reviews), this book has a very interesting "twist" on the faerie story.
Wings is the story of 15 year old Laurel who has been homeschooled up until this point and has started her first year of high school. Along with adapting to high school, Laurel undergoes some surprising changes and learns that she is not who she thought she was.
My favourite part of the book was the character of David, Laurel's best friend. He is so sweet, logical, patient and understanding. I really like him. And then, on the other hand, there is Tamani, who ignites chaotic feelings in Laurel, that she's never felt before. I am Team David. Though I feel I haven't got the chance to really know Tamani yet, so who knows? *shrugs* I had a few issues with some repetitiveness of the dialogue in the beginning of this book, and I got a bit frustrated with Laurel, at certain points, but I do look forward to reading the next books in the series to see where this goes:
and
August 18, 2011
2.5 stars. So I wasn't completely disliking Wings the way I was half expecting to. It had a very simple, almost elementary start. Once I stopped picking at the writing, I settled in to give the book a fair shot and found myself having fun with the book. It was a fast and fun read, so I can't complain too much.
Sure, cocky, perfect guys have completely saturated the market, leaving us lovers of YA looking for different male leads. We want flaws. We want real. I about groaned as I felt being pushed in the direction of the "perfect" guy instead of the "best friend." Yes, I do believe I've read this before. More than a few times. In fact, I was thrilled when I read a book Drink, Slay, Love and the author decided to go the opposite route by pushing the "nice" guy over the "perfect" guy.
That said, I didn't like the nice guy in this book. He was flat with no appealing qualities. Even best friends need to have something appealing about them. Is it any wonder I found myself drawn to the perfect guy? Plus, he had the added element of mystery. Sorry, nice guy. You lose when going up against a hot guy who's also mysterious, whether I want to like him or not. Sucks to be you.
Even knowing that this book fits every single stereotype of what has run its course in YA and probably needs to die at this point, it wasn't completely bad.
One big positive was the spin on faeries. At first I had a hard time with them being actual plants, and was even mildly disturbed over the wings not being wings at all, but flower petals actually growing out of the girl's back. However, I did laugh at the reproduction discussion and found it to be quite clever, actually.
Maybe it's some of the little girl still in me, but I am fascinated with magical stories and always root for true love. I hope that part of me never grows up.
Sure, cocky, perfect guys have completely saturated the market, leaving us lovers of YA looking for different male leads. We want flaws. We want real. I about groaned as I felt being pushed in the direction of the "perfect" guy instead of the "best friend." Yes, I do believe I've read this before. More than a few times. In fact, I was thrilled when I read a book Drink, Slay, Love and the author decided to go the opposite route by pushing the "nice" guy over the "perfect" guy.
That said, I didn't like the nice guy in this book. He was flat with no appealing qualities. Even best friends need to have something appealing about them. Is it any wonder I found myself drawn to the perfect guy? Plus, he had the added element of mystery. Sorry, nice guy. You lose when going up against a hot guy who's also mysterious, whether I want to like him or not. Sucks to be you.
Even knowing that this book fits every single stereotype of what has run its course in YA and probably needs to die at this point, it wasn't completely bad.
One big positive was the spin on faeries. At first I had a hard time with them being actual plants, and was even mildly disturbed over the wings not being wings at all, but flower petals actually growing out of the girl's back. However, I did laugh at the reproduction discussion and found it to be quite clever, actually.
Maybe it's some of the little girl still in me, but I am fascinated with magical stories and always root for true love. I hope that part of me never grows up.
May 3, 2013
One day a flower grows out of Laurel's back. Shortly thereafter she discovers she's a plant. Luckily her would be boyfriend is OK with dating a plant, in fact he thinks it's kind of cool. This of course raises the question as to what he was really doing with that iceberg lettuce in his room.
The premise of this book is whacked enough that I really should like it...sorry to say it just wasn't working. There was a lot of talk about petals which was just creepy, and would be boyfriend even asked if he could touch her petals, to which she demurely agreed.
Then there was the mouth to mouth experiment where she breathed out oxygen and he breathed out carbon dioxide. Personally I always thought the touching of the petals came after the mouth to mouth...seems I was wrong.
The good v. evil battle towards the end redeemed the book a little, but not nearly enough. Still it is the authors debut novel and I can forgive a lot in a first effort.
The premise of this book is whacked enough that I really should like it...sorry to say it just wasn't working. There was a lot of talk about petals which was just creepy, and would be boyfriend even asked if he could touch her petals, to which she demurely agreed.
Then there was the mouth to mouth experiment where she breathed out oxygen and he breathed out carbon dioxide. Personally I always thought the touching of the petals came after the mouth to mouth...seems I was wrong.
The good v. evil battle towards the end redeemed the book a little, but not nearly enough. Still it is the authors debut novel and I can forgive a lot in a first effort.
July 14, 2021
2.5
Je pensais avoir lu ce livre plus jeune mais finalement il semblerait que j’avais uniquement des souvenirs pour les 30 premières pages😂
Résolument dans la lignée des paranormal romances de l’époque twilight (bien entendu avec un triangle amoureux inclus), je me suis surprise à trouver le livre et le style d’écriture un peu simpliste. Si je trouvais l’univers intéressant au départ l’inclusion de références légendaires de notre monde m’a un peu désintéressée, sans compter les coquilles nombreuses dans ma copie ainsi que l’invraisemblablité de beaucoup d’éléments du récit. Je pense continuer la saga pour voir où ça me mène quand même lol
Je pensais avoir lu ce livre plus jeune mais finalement il semblerait que j’avais uniquement des souvenirs pour les 30 premières pages😂
Résolument dans la lignée des paranormal romances de l’époque twilight (bien entendu avec un triangle amoureux inclus), je me suis surprise à trouver le livre et le style d’écriture un peu simpliste. Si je trouvais l’univers intéressant au départ l’inclusion de références légendaires de notre monde m’a un peu désintéressée, sans compter les coquilles nombreuses dans ma copie ainsi que l’invraisemblablité de beaucoup d’éléments du récit. Je pense continuer la saga pour voir où ça me mène quand même lol
November 2, 2016
3,5 αστεράκια.
August 19, 2015
5 just like always :) This is about my third time rereading this book and it's never failed to give me just the perfect amount of entertainment, action, and love.
June 28, 2015
Now I remember why I had fell in love with this book when I was younger and so disappointed for not having reading the other books in this series. I don't know the story is just so different? Compelling? The writing is simple but the concept and the relationships are much more deeper. I do not regret finishing this past 3am on a school night!
Also I don't know for which team I fight for anymore, I'm torn.
Also I don't know for which team I fight for anymore, I'm torn.
January 3, 2018
This book is so damn good! And the love interest is ahhh
Displaying 1 - 30 of 5,435 reviews