Lament is the first out of two book in Maggie Stiefvater's Books of Faerie duo that was released in 2008.

Deidre "Dee" Monaghan is a fantastic and extremely talented musician but she is also really shy. She is terrified of performing and throws up before each one and she's just about to play in the biggest arts competition of the year. Luckily, extremely good looking Luke Dillon is there to hold her hair back and put some confidence back in her. Dee's life is completely ordinary, apart from the fact that she has the ability of telekinesis and Luke seems to be the complete opposite. Everything about him is mysterious and Dee cannot help but be drawn to him.

Her Grandmother doesn't exactly agree. The first time that she meets Luke, she warns Dee off him, knowing what he really is. Luke entangles Dee in a world of faeries, magic and deception, a world where she has no way out and no way of changing what she is. Dee is falling for him hard and demands answers about his past but when she starts learning more, she, Luke and best friend James are all put in extreme danger and she has some really hard choices to make.

My Opinion
If you have read my review of Ballad, you will know that I read these books in the wrong order, leaving me with mixed feelings about Dee, the heroine. I totally changed my mind about her though after reading this book. Even though she learned some pretty bad things about Luke which left her unsure of her feelings for a while but you can tell that she is completely in love and would do anything for him. Dee doesn't know how to deal with her newfound powers or what to do with them and Luke helps her through that, pushing them closer together. They also have something in common when it comes to music as Luke plays the flute, which is what brings them together to begin with. I thought that Dee was cold and uncaring in the next book but reading her story made me realise just how much she went through and how much she lost.

There are two heroes in this book and both were fantastic. First there is Luke, the love interest. He was everything that I expected from him, being mysterious, sexy and intelligent all at the same time. I really enjoyed that we didn't know everything about him for quite a while in the story and has past was unfolded as it went on. Although he was supposed to be the bad guy, he turned good after he met Dee. I loved how when she read his mind, she could see everything that he had done in the past and even though it was extremely bad, she could see how sorry he was and how much he didn't want to do it.

Secondly there is James (the main character of Ballad). He doesn't have a huge part in this story but he is always there for Dee when she needs him. It's obvious that he is jealous of her relationship with Luke, because he wants her for himself but he doesn't really get in the way. If anything, he wants Dee to be happy. Dee and James are close because they both share the gift of music and knows what it feels like to be on the outside but when he reveals that he can predict the future, they become even closer. James is cocky and witty which is why I liked him. He was different from any other hero that I have read in a long time and he stood out a lot to me.

The book is written solely from Dee's point of view so we don't really know what everyone else is going through. I really liked how Ballad was told from different perspectives so I would have liked to have seen that in this book too. I really wanted to know exactly what was going through Luke's head and what he had been through in the past. Him having his own book, set in the past, would be a fantastic idea.

There is a lot going on throughout the story which kept me hooked although I thought there was a little too much going on at times. There is everything that happens to Dee, a bit of James, Dee's co worker Sara and then Dee's family, as well as the faerie world. This book would have been more effective if there had been less characters and more simplicity to the plot.

Stiefvater puts a lot of effort into the detail of the faerie world which is what makes the book so magical. I could imagine what each of the different kinds of faerie looked like and it put very clear pictures in my mind. I loved knowing what was going on in the different world and Stiefvater managed to bring good and evil together really well.

If I had read this before Ballad, I would have still wanted to know more about James over Dee because he was much more interesting. It's a good book but not as good as the sequel.