Guest Review: Spells

Guest Review!!!

Today Alexa stopped by for a guest review!!

You can find her at: Pages of Forbidden Love

Title: Spells

Author: Aprilynne Pike
Publisher: Harper Collins

Publication Date: May 2010 

"I can't just storm in and proclaim my intentions. I can't ‘steal' you away. I just have to wait and hope that, someday, you'll ask," Tamani said.

"And if I don't?" Laurel said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Then I guess I'll be waiting forever."

Although Laurel has come to accept her true identity as a faerie, she refuses to turn her back on her human life—and especially her boyfriend, David—to return to the faerie world.
But when she is summoned to Avalon, Laurel's feelings for the charismatic faerie sentry Tamani are undeniable. She is forced to make a choice—a choice that could break her heart.

My Thoughts:
When we last left Laurel, Tam and David everything was mostly on the right track. Laurel had saved her dad's life and managed to keep their cabin with the help of the faeries. Upon returning to this exciting world we are informed that Laurel is invited to come spend most of her summer in Avalon so she can get back to her studies as a Fall faerie. Avalon is beautiful and a place meant for peace and order where Winter faeries are rare and lead the place while Fall faeries are considered an important second. Summer and Spring faeries fall into the social order after the upper faeries and there are several society rules on how one must behave when addressing an upper faerie. It all sounds complex which it can become with all the things Laurel must now figure out. She is of course entirely use to the way the human world functions but now she must learn a new place with new customs. When her stay in Avalon is over she must go back to her human life to help protect the people she loves most.

I loved getting to see Avalon and see how the faerie world works. It was great to see Laurel in a different element and watch her grow and change in subtle ways. It was also great to see her friendship (cough relationship cough) with Tam grow more than ever before. He is key in the beginning of the story because he can show Laurel just how much she has missed when she is in the human world. He is however a Spring faerie so he is lower in class than Laurel and their friendship is a little strained sometimes because of the strict Avalon customs. The Avalon world kind of reminded me of Harry Potter sometimes, how there is this whole other world to escape to in order to learn stuff that humans have no clue about.

It was a little heartbreaking to see Laurel leave Avalon and Tam behind yet again to rejoin the human world with her boyfriend David. The heart breaking lasted only a little while though as the reader starts to remember all of the things that make David such a great guy. I personally felt so connected with the story, I was feeling some of the same emotions as Laurel with her extreme like and troubles over both of our leading male characters. Just as Laurel starts to get comfy in the human world again the trolls start to show up, out to get revenge. Laurel is left having to try to find a way to stay alive during this slowly forming war between good and evil, faerie and troll!

Overall I really did fall in love with this story I read it in about a day and a half because I was that engrossed in what was happening. I loved the characters even more than I did in the first book and I felt like everyone grew up in a natural way. I liked how we got to see more mature characters and that the relationships forming between Laurel and David/Tam were growing as well. Who doesn't love the all out battle of a girl's heart as she tries so hard to figure out who to love, who is right for her. The ending left me screaming out that I want the next book in the series because Aprilynne left us at a cliffhanger, one that I can't wait to read more about in the next installment. Overall I would give this book 5 stars, I enjoyed it even more than I did the first book Wings.