Sunday, October 21, 2012

How to Ditch Your Fairy (Justine Larbalestier)

Summary:
Charlie is a freshman in high school, in a magical place called New Avalon, where all the celebrities are cooler than everyone else in the world and are called "Ours," as in "Our Tom Hanks," or "Our Justin Bieber." And nearly everyone has a fairy. Different people's fairies help do different things. One of Charlie's best friends, Rochelle, has a "clothes shopping" fairy, the boy she's got a crush on has a "get out of trouble" fairy, and the girl she hates more than anything has an "every boy will like you no matter what" fairy. Charlie has a parking fairy, so that no matter where she goes, whether she's driving or not (which has always been a "not" because she can't yet drive), there will always be the perfect parking spot. Charlie gets sick of being used for her parking fairy's abilities, and has been walking everywhere for months, in the hopes that her fairy will go away since there's nothing for it to do. But it isn't working fast enough for her, and she keeps getting demerits from her super-strict school. If she can't find a way to get rid of her fairy, she might be expelled from school, and she doesn't want that. If only she knew what to do...

Thoughts:
Weird book. I thought it would be a little more fun than it was, but it turned out to be a little tedious. There were a few times I wondered where something was coming from, and why, but it wound up just being pretty mediocre. It is an interesting concept, but the main character is very selfish, and very self-centered, not to mention the town itself. (Apparently no one in New Avalon ever wants to leave because nothing else outside the town could nearly as wonderful as it is in New Avalon, and no one really thinks of anything from the outside, or knows anything from the outside. Strange.) The author creates a bunch of slang words for the book that are fairly stupid, and make the speakers sound strange. There's a glossary in the back, of course, because why wouldn't there be. I had been looking forward to this book for a while, in the hopes that it would be fun and worth the wait. It wasn't. I even had given this as an option for a book group at one point, but the idea was nixed for another book entirely. Thank goodness we didn't read this, because I would have been embarrassed for suggesting it. Boo.

Book 41 of 50

Pages: 320
Genre: fantasy, teen lit
Grade: C
Would I Recommend?: Meh. Not really worth the time and effort.

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