Let's Try Reviewing This Thing: The Treachery of Beautiful Things, by Ruth Frances Long

(Don't want to read it all? Check the bottom for a one-sentence summary that gets the general basis of my opinion down.)

Due to the aching awfulness that is senior year, classes, and work, I’ve read a lot less these past few months than I ever have before. I haven’t had the time to sit down and read a book cover to cover all at once since school started—that is, until I read this book. For this book, I freaking made time to read it. I loved it that much.

I mean, it captivated me from the get-go, with its amazing cover:

Gorgeous, and it certainly makes up for the cumbersome title. I’m a sucker for beautiful covers. The summary is even better, and I checked it out immediately once I read it.

The trees swallowed her brother whole.

And Jenny was there to see it. Years later, when she returns to the woods where Tom was taken to good-bye at last, she finds herself lured into a world where stunning beauty masks the most treacherous of evils, and strange and dangerous creatures await—creatures who seem to consider her a threat. Among them is Jack, mercurial and magnetic, with allegiances that shift as much as his moods. Determined to find her brother, with or without Jack’s help, Jenny struggles to navigate a faerie world where nothing is what it seems, no one is who they say, and she’s faced with a choice between salvation or sacrifice—and not just her own.

Faeries? Faeries! I love faerie books, because there’s so much you can do with the creatures that can’t always be done with other supernatural folk like vampires or werewolves. So many cultures had such drastically different types of faeries—the ancient and aloof sidhe, the Shakespearean Oberon-and-Titania duo that rule over pranksters and nobles alike, and of course the Tinkerbell-like pixies—that book writers can take a thousand different interpretations and make their own unique story out of it. I’m rarely disappointed by a faerie book, and this was definitely one of the best ones I’ve read.

The faerie lore in this is deeply original while sticking true to old fables—Oberon and Titania, as well as Queen Mab make an appearance, and the atmosphere set up in this book is perfect. No one does anything for Jenny without a price, and everyone has an ulterior motive. Nothing is as it seems, and you’re rooting for Jenny to find her brother despite everyone’s schemes against her from the very beginning.

Jenny was a very good character. Perhaps a little underdeveloped, but her devotion to her brother and her innocence in such a dark world kept me rooting from her to beginning to end. Jack, who also gets chapters from his point of view, had me much more invested. His plight and his backstory, when it is revealed, was heartbreaking for me, and how he helps Jenny while fighting the hopelessness of his situation moved me along more than Jenny herself did.

Overall, this was a great book. I give it a seven out of ten, and if you’re interested in faeries or just fantasy in general, I would give it a look.

Tl;dr: Great characters and even greater faerie lore made this an excellent book for me and any other lovers of fairy tales and fantasy.