1st of the Unseelie Duology
Type of Fantasy: Urban
Synopsis
Iselia “Seelie” Graygrove looks just like her twin, Isolde… but as an autistic changeling trying to navigate her unpredictable magic, Seelie finds it more difficult to fit in with the humans around her. When Seelie and Isolde are caught up in a heist gone wrong and make some unexpected allies, they find themselves unraveling a larger mystery that has its roots in the history of humans and fae alike.
Both sisters soon discover that the secrets of the faeries may be more valuable than any pile of gold and jewels. But can Seelie harness her magic in time to protect her sister, and herself?
My Thoughts
What I Liked:
- The magic: I haven’t read a book about the Fae in a very long time, so it was fun to journey to a
world with them and especially learn about the Seelie and Unseelie Fae realms. - The van and the cat: The personality of this van the two sisters lived and traveled in was great. And their cat that’s not a cat was very clever.
- Seelie’s snark: every teen’s gotta have it.
- Raze: (I don’t know how to spell his name because I listened to this book on audio.) I didn’t understand why Seelie was so hard on him for most of the book. He is a cookie-sweet guy with his cute, silly personality.
- I liked that the MC was autistic, but unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy her personality (see below).
What I Didn’t Like:
- Seelie: Her head was a difficult place to be, mostly because she’s selfish, immature, argumentative,
and has a victim attitude. I don’t like saying that because according to the note at the end of the book, the MC is based loosely off the author who’s autistic. We are all selfish to some degree, but it was hard to root for Seelie when she didn’t recognize her mistakes and learn from them. - Being smarter than the main character :). It was difficult to believe that Seelie didn’t realize until the end of the story that the voice in her head was connected to something that had happened early on in the story. It was pretty obvious to the reader from the beginning. This happened at the end too, when I knew almost immediately where Seelie had woken up, but it took her several pages to figure it out, and then she’s all shocked and upset. Where did you think you were, given everything that’s happened to you?!
- This might be something I just missed, but I was still confused at the end of the story about how Seelie is a changeling. It’s mentioned several times, but the circumstances were still not very clear.
I probably won’t read the sequel to Unseelie when it comes out mainly because the MC annoyed me so much, but if you enjoy the Fae and autistic characters, then you may enjoy Unseelie.
What book recently let you down?
