River Readers

This was a very different take on the Peter Pan story. Tiger Lily was usually a minor character and here she gets her day in the sun. However, she also has a relationship with Tinkerbell that is very different from the one Peter and Tink are always shown having. This was sad, yet strangely satisfying too.

We are introduced to Toby Day, half fae-half human. She's been enchanted as a goldfish for 14 years after a botched investigation for her liege. Initially she tries hard to avoid all things fairy and live in the mundane world. Unfortunately, the death of her sometimes friend Evening Winterrose, pulls her back into the fairy realm.

Xar is an self-centered younger brother, son to the Lead Wizard, whose wizarding powers haven't come in yet. Wish is a Warrior princess daughter of the Queen of Warriors, who struggles to be warrior-like. They live in opposing settlements, who long ago defeated and drove out the evil witches, but now these 2 factions battle each other. Wish and Xar will learn that witches still exist and they may need to help each other to survive the witches as well as their demanding parents. An enjoyable read.

Nancy has just arrived at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children. This is not your normal boarding school. It is a school for children who have traveled to other worlds and for one reason or another been sent back to their original world. These kids no longer fit in and miss their "homes". Nancy was in a world of the dead and when students start turning up dead she is suspected. It is up to her and her newfound friends to figure out who is killing everyone before the school has to be closed. 

This was not exactly what I was expecting. It was a much darker look at the fairy tales I love. While I enjoy a good fractured tale or a remake, this book had me looking at the stories in too much of a literal tunnel. The idea of Snow White being a 7-9 year old girl who "marries" the dwarves or the more pagan/Wiccan rituals that are suggested were not my cup of tea. I know Grimm's stories are much darker than Disney's, but that doesn't mean I enjoy looking at them through the eyes of a pedophile either.

When Feyre mistakenly kills a fae disguised as a wolf in her forest, she must pay the price laid out in the treaty. Spend her eternity in the realm of the fairies across the wall that was erected during a war between the fairies and humans years ago. She lives in dread as to what she will find there and wonders whether she will survive. Under the watch of the High Lord of the Spring Court, Tamlin, she finds life is not at all what she expected. Something ominous is happening in the Court Of Spring and Feyre must find out what it is and if it will affect the human family she left behind.

I just happened upon this book while shelving in the Teen Zone. It was an interesting take on Peter Pan. I couldn't imagine losing my younger brother to an accident that I caused, so it makes sense that Wendy would need time and maybe a dream to accept this new reality.

When a wealthy and sheltered young girl stumbles into a pitched war between two fairy kingdoms, the fate of San Francisco itself hangs in the balance!

The first decade of the twentieth century is coming to a close, and San Francisco is still recovering from the great earthquake of 1906. Isabel watched the destruction safely from her window, sheltered within her high-society world.