Review: The Faerie Ring

THE FAERIE RING
Kiki Hamilton
Paranormal Young Adult
352 pages
Tor Teen
Available Now
Received from publisher for review

THE STORY
Tiki's just trying to survive on the streets of London and take care of her family of outcasts while she's at it. When one of her pickpocket outings leads her to Buckingham palace and the discovery of a beautiful red and gold ring, she thinks maybe her luck is changing.

Rieker, a young man on the streets like Tiki who takes it upon himself to keep an eye on her, informs her that the ring is far more than a beautiful trinket. It's the one thing keeping the fey from waging war on the unsuspecting human population, and more than just Prince Leopold and the Queen herself are looking for it.

Tiki is bound and determined to glean some monetary compensation for the ring to help her family despite the power and importance she now knows it holds, and as she enters into a dark game with both the royal family and the fey, the truth about her own existence is revealed.

MY THOUGHTS
This review is going to be a little different. Prior to starting The Faerie Ring I was in a bit of a reading and reviewing funk. I’m sure fellow bloggers (and even avid readers in general) have had similar experiences, where you look over at a stack of review books you know you definitely want to read but yet for some reason you just can't seem to muster the same sense of anticipation and eagerness with which you've cracked spines in the past. That was my current mindset at the time I began this book, and I feel my overall temporary indifference to review books in general perhaps unjustly influenced my opinion of the story itself.

When I went to start this review, the first word that popped into my head was “nice”. Nice is one of those vague one-word descriptions that is decidedly unhelpful in a review or critique context as it fails to convey any emotional information and gives anyone reading your review nothing specific to help them determine whether or not you liked the book. Nice. Neither good nor bad, but rather pleasant in a way that didn't bring goosebumps to my skin, tears to my eyes, or any new and desirable scars to my heart. For me, Tiki, Rieker and the rest of the street ruffians were an interesting enough bunch, but at no time did I feel that compulsion to ignore everything else in my reality and lose myself in the story until I reached the last page and became instantly depressed that I’d reached the end.

Similarly, the plot had elements that normally appeal to me—mystery, a touch of romance, and a world where the supernatural hovers within a brush of my fingertips–but perhaps due to the aforementioned funk, the combination of admittedly desirable factors never truly caught my attention and held it. I think this story will appeal to a variety of readers as some of the prominent plot devices in YA literature like insta-love, love triangles, and cliffhangers are thankfully and blessedly absent, giving readers the opportunity to enjoy this book without repeatedly finding themselves on tired and familiar ground.

As a result of my shortage of enthusiasm before even picking The Faerie Ring up and my subsequent lackluster reaction to it, I don’t feel as though giving it a rating is altogether fair to Ms. Hamilton's story. I've read many a glowing review for this one from bloggers who I know share my taste in books, so I think now that my reviewer's brain is back in the game (I read this one a couple months back) I'll be picking The Faerie Ring up again just before the sequel comes out sometime next year and read them one after the other, and I look forward to seeing if and how my perception of it changes.