Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I admit it. I am a sucker for princess-y books. I love fairytales. I love princess stories. I had picked this book up randomly at a library sale for a whopping 50 cents. By the author from Ella Enchanted? Sure. I’ll take that, thank you!
The writing was a little hard to follow sometimes but I wasn’t terribly annoyed because it IS a YA book and the parts that were most difficult were integral to the story itself; the main character comes from a land of people who sing. A LOT. They sing about everything. It is what they do. So the main character sang. A LOT. It was a bit hard to picture in my head but I understood the importance behind it.
The book really is sort of a twist on the Snow White tale. The main character is described as having blood red lips, snow-white skin, and black hair. Among her people, she is seen as ugly. Complete with a jealous queen, a magic mirror, a charming prince, and a poisoned apple, it really was a broad take on a different type of Snow White story. None the less, even with it being a YA book, I did enjoy it for the easy read that it was.
My only real complaint, which is one I often have, is the pacing of the book. It builds up and builds up and then suddenly the peak is breached and everything comes crashing down quickly into a nicely resolved ending. It was almost like the author figured that no one would be interested in the real clean-up from the mess that had been created. I would have just liked to see -more- is all.
Still, I recommend this for the younger readers or those who are like me: we love princess stories.
