After reading Maggie Steifvaters previous series of books and being quite impressed with them (Shiver, Linger.....), myself and my daughter (the family that reads together stays together! Lol!), decided that we would try her other books, with this (Lament) and what we thought originally was the second follow on book to Lament, (Ballad), would be the ideal purchase!

Sixteen year old Dee is a cloverhand, this is someone who can see fairies, (though for a good portion of the book she doesn't actually know that!), she is also an amazing musician though with very little confidence when it comes to competing.

At a competition she meets gorgeous and mysterious Luke, who not only seems to fancy her silly, but also gives her the confidence to play her music the way she wants, winning her her first title.

But she soons realises that there is more to beautiful Luke, and maybe he wants more than just a summer fling, couple that with the mysterious man that is stalking her it feels like it will be a long summer!

I have read fairie related books before, and have quite enjoyed them but felt that this book was a little flat feeling, at no time did i feel any empathy with the main charcter of Dee, she came across as quite weak at times and at no time really questioned her involvement with Luke, even when strange things started to happen, which (when you consider she hadn't realised she was a cloverhand until the second chapter!) was completely unrealistic!

Luke on the other hand i did feel a conection with, i really cared that he was suffering, even when it reveals he is actually integral to Dee's survival, i loved how he slowly burned for Dee, knowing that he may well have finally (after a thousand years!) found "the one", but knew he couldn't indulge in his feelings, so reading how he held back but yearned at the same time made the book much better for me!

Story wise again it was a little flat for me, a cloverhand challenging another cloverhand for postion of power within the fairie community, with the only redeeming quality of it being the fairies themselves, these are portrayed as vicious and self serving, thinking nothing of murder and rape for their own amusement, they were in short very menacing feeling!

I really didn't feel this book at all, with the only saving grace (or reason i kept reading until the end!) was the love story between Dee and Luke, though this is a bit of a heartbreaker twist at the end!

This book (like the Shiver series of books), is aimed towards the younger reader market, but seems to have crossed over to the fantasy genre, meaning i can now share books with my 11 year old daughter, without worrying there is anymore than a little colourful language to contend with, though they do all seem to revolve around teenage angst and unrequited love!

Price wise this is available from "The works" as part of a "buy 3 for £5.00" deal currently running.

Thanks for reading x

ISBN 978-1-407120-7