Spells by Aprilynne Pike

Spells by Aprilynne Pike

"Six months have passed since Laurel saved the gateway to the faerie realm of Avalon. Now she must spend her summer there, honing her skills as a Fall ...more Six months have passed since Laurel saved the gateway to the faerie realm of Avalon. Now she must spend her summer there, honing her skills as a Fall faerie. But her human family and friends are still in mortal danger--and the gateway to Avalon is more compromised than ever.

When it comes time to protect those she loves, will she depend on David, her human boyfriend, for help? Or will she turn to Tamani, the electrifying faerie with whom her connection is undeniable?" (summary from Author's Website)

So, surprisingly I really liked Tamani in this book. I remember not really liking him in the first book, but he is growing on me. Alas, David still hasn’t won me over much. I thought that Laurel’s summer in Avalon was fun to read about because we got to learn more about the mythology and culture of fairies in her world. I had wished there was more of this in the first book, and hope for more of it in the sequels. The details of the Avalon world made the this book have just a bit more of that magical feel that I was wanting from the first book. I thought it was interesting to see how Laurel’s mom reacted to her being a fairy in this book, and thought it was cool that Pike would include Laurel’s parents as pretty major minor characters in the book. I ‘m glad they are not completely forgotten like the majority of fantasy fiction.

I’ve noticed that a common complaint about the first book was that the fairy’s enemies—trolls— aren’t very well developed and kind of show up randomly. I’m afraid this book is pretty much the same. There are still a bunch of evil trolls wandering around trying to get into Avalon, and randomly attacking Laurel and her friends. There are some more interesting developments in the conflict with the trolls in that we get the feeling that they have an larger evil plan going on, and that there are professional troll hunters out there, but other than that they show up, make life hard for Laurel, get beat up and disappear. Hopefully, we get to learn exactly what these troll villains are up to in future books. Also, Tamani gets a super- secret mission for the next book. I have to admit I’m curious to find out what he is planning to do.

Something that bugged me about this book was the amount of making out done by David and Laurel. Laurel’s mom is always reminding them to stop. It was really annoying and I wish the author hadn’t included so much of that in the book. It got old really fast. So, really this book is not squeaky clean in that regard.

So, when it comes down to it I guess my feelings regarding this book are kind of mixed. There were a few things that I didn’t like about the narrative, but I still had an enjoyable time reading it for the most part. I had a hard time putting the book down once I started.

Aprilynne Pike's website