I really wanted to love this book. I had high hopes for another Young Adult fairy story after reading Wicked Lovely (which was fabulous) and then the fact that the library didn't have this book so I paid for a hardback copy to read made me even more invested in Wondrous Strange being worth my money.I think I need to be more cautious with these modern fairy books. I don't have a long history of enjoying supernatural stories. In fact I'm usually weirded out by them like Roger Sutton ("Magic with a k or fairy with an e and I'm outta there."). This one has lots of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" woven into the plot which sounded good but in the end the fairies with an e turned out to be as silly as most people would imagine.
If I hadn't paid money for this book I would have stopped reading. I forced myself to finish but it was a chore. The characters never seemed real, the writing was just ho-hum, and the whole thing just felt like it was trying so hard to be the next squeaky clean sensation with teen girls. Trying way too hard. Say what you will about Stephenie Meyer's writing skills but she had an award winning dream. You just can't fake that.
