Fairytales for Wilde Girls - Allyse Near
Genre: YA Fantasy
My Rating: ★★★★
Summary:
A deliciously dark bubblegum-gothic fairytale from a stunning new Australian talent.
‘He’s gone the same way as those little birds that bothered me with their awful songs! And you will too, you and your horrible heart-music, because you won’t stay out of my woods!’
There’s a dead girl in a birdcage in the woods. That’s not unusual. Isola Wilde sees a lot of things other people don’t. But when the girl appears at Isola’s window, her every word a threat, Isola needs help.
Her real-life friends – Grape, James and new boy Edgar – make her forget for a while. And her brother-princes – the mermaids, faeries and magical creatures seemingly lifted from the pages of the French fairytales Isola idolises – will protect her with all the fierce love they possess.
It may not be enough.
Isola needs to uncover the truth behind the dead girl’s demise and appease her enraged spirit, before the ghost steals Isola’s last breath.
‘He’s gone the same way as those little birds that bothered me with their awful songs! And you will too, you and your horrible heart-music, because you won’t stay out of my woods!’
There’s a dead girl in a birdcage in the woods. That’s not unusual. Isola Wilde sees a lot of things other people don’t. But when the girl appears at Isola’s window, her every word a threat, Isola needs help.
Her real-life friends – Grape, James and new boy Edgar – make her forget for a while. And her brother-princes – the mermaids, faeries and magical creatures seemingly lifted from the pages of the French fairytales Isola idolises – will protect her with all the fierce love they possess.
It may not be enough.
Isola needs to uncover the truth behind the dead girl’s demise and appease her enraged spirit, before the ghost steals Isola’s last breath.
Review:
BEAUTIFULLY written, dark and light all at the same time, modern and classic, poetic and realistic. So many opposites that WORKED! I have never read anything like this, ever.
I was mind-blown by page 4, but after that I found it all a bit too much and a bit confusing, but then as I got my head around everything, it all started to make sense and I could appreciate her writing a lot more. At times, I did feel like all of the imaginative language and poetic devices got in the way of me feeling a deep connection with the characters, but after a while I really did start to connect with a few of the characters. I loved how everyone was different and had their own distinct voices and the IMAGINATION in the story is just WILDE (see what I did there?) It was just magical, to be honest. The pictures in my mind were painted so vividly by Allyse that I could feel myself in the situations, seeing everything the characters were seeing. It started to pick up a lot in the last 150 pages and I did not put it down until I read the very last words. I loved the twists and turns at the end and I especially loved how she entwined a classic, fairytale style with a modern setting. Absolutely genius!
Overall, this was a great debut novel! Really well done!
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