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3.43 AVERAGE
3.43 AVERAGE
3.5
You can find my review for Thorn Jack here: https://taylormaemarie.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/thorn-jack-spoiler-free-review/
You can find my review for Thorn Jack here: https://taylormaemarie.wordpress.com/2016/08/16/thorn-jack-spoiler-free-review/
I was given this ARC by Harper Voyager in exchange for an honest review.
So overall I give this book 3 stars. It gets 4 stars for story and characters, but only 2 stars for writing and plot line. This is a modern retelling of the Scottish fairy tale Tam Lin. Apparently there are many interpretations of the story its just not one of the widely popular ones. I am all in for a fairy tale retelling so I figured I would really enjoy this book. Well I was partially right.
Finn, the main character, moves to Fair Hollow, her father's home town to live in her grandmother's old house after the deaths of her mother and sister, Lily Rose. She attends HallowHeart, one of two local colleges, while her father teaches at the other, St.Johns. Finn makes two really good friends, Christie and Sylvie, and a few enemies, Angyll and her crew. She also meets a group of strange, gothic, vintage, oddly beautiful, and very dangerous people known as the Fatas. The Fatas are a large, very rich and eccentric extended "family". Finn falls for "cousin" Jack and tries to befriend "adopted" Nathan. Finn, Christie, and Sylvie are all threatened, tortured, and kidnapped by various members of the Fatas. Angyll ends up being killed by one of them. Throughout the story, Finn tries to unravel Lily Rose's journal and how it pertains to Fair Hollow and the Fatas because there are so many similarities. In the end though true love, between Finn and Jack wins out and the Queen of the Fatas is destroyed leaving the rest of the Fatas to live on and Finn and Jack to live as normally as possible.
Finn and Jack are both likable characters and throughout you are pulling for their love. I would have liked to see more development of Finn's life before and without Jack and the move. Once she meets Jack her whole world revolves around him and the Fatas, which is both cliche and unhealthy. Jack is not developed until the last chapters and then only a little. Christie and Sylvie are great friends and characters, but neither is developed. Christie is a flirt who you want to hug and slap all at the same time. I would like to have seen more of his life without Finn and Sylvie, maybe even heard more about all those brothers. Sylvie is a goth girl who is supposedly a witch. I would love to know more about her family and the witch blood. The characters are written as freshmen in college but I felt like they were freshmen in high school. Finn, Christie, Sylvie and Angyll are all very immature, which could be from their small town upbringing or their damaged psyches. Jack and the Fatas are supposed to be hundreds of years old, but really act like spoiled rich high school bullies. I see a lot of parallels with Vampire Diaries, with Finn being Elena and Reiko being Rebecca and Angyll being Katherine. I think that each of the individual Fatas could have been elaborated on.
The story line is classic: new girl meets and falls for older unobtainable guy. Guy falls for her even though his and her friends forbid it. In the end true love conquers all the naysayers and the drama. I like this story line usually and Harbour kept it flowing nicely through the book. The scenes are set with lots of details on lighting, colors, sounds and smells. I know that smells are a big deal in fairy lands but the overuse was annoying. The details seemed to be written before the overall plot outline was finished. The author was apparently rather young when she wrote the story and that shows. The story is fluffed to fill the pages with unneeded adjectives and filler. I do not see any major flaws in this book that a ruthless editor couldn't iron out.
In conclusion I liked the story and the characters. I felt that the book as a whole needed a little more work. I read an ARC so maybe some of that was worked out in the final draft. I hope that Harbour continues to write and hone her craft. I look forward to seeing her growth as an author.
P.S. The cover is really pretty. And you should check out her website for more on Lily Rose. http://www.darkfaeryblackrabbit.blogspot.com/
This was definitely the weirdest book I have ever read. It was so strange throughout the whole thing that it kept me reading even when I thought about quitting. If I think about it too deeply, I realize that I don't even fully understand it. It is a book about faeries without hearts, but can grow hearts, which make them vulnerable. It is a book about sacrifices and death and grief. It is a book about love. SO WEIRD!
I’ve wanted to read this book for quite awhile now, so when I found it on BookOutlet I knew I had to get it. This is a fairytale retelling but it’s a retelling of Tam Lin, which is Scottish in origin rather than the generic retellings of Disney fairytales. This is also not what I would consider to be a YA fantasy story (yay!) and has some legitimately dark and creepy moments. After a tragic family situation, Finn Sullivan is starting college in a quaint New England town that is disturbing in a number of ways. There are people having woodland gatherings in costume, possible hauntings, and then there is the Fata family…
The Fata’s are creepy- they are wealthy, but no one knows where they live and there are old pictures of their relatives that look identical to them. Everything points at something wrong here, but Finn gets involved with them anyways, attending parties and inviting Jack Fata into her home when she barely knows him. You can’t just go inviting people in when the book is clearly about faeries. Which it is. Surprisingly, it ended up being a very appropriate pre-Halloween read and I really enjoyed it. I was even more excited to learn that there is a second book called Briar Queen.
I really liked how strange the town of Fair Hollow was- it was described as having all these huge dilapidated mansion, weird shops, and a liberal arts college with mythological décor that really belongs in a museum. Parties were hosted at the abandoned mansions by Reiko, Jack, and family on several occasions and they didn’t always turn out so well for the humans there. The people there (actual people, not faeries) were just as strange and unique as the mysterious Fata’s. Finn’s new friends Christy and Sylvie turn out to actually be humans, not otherworldy beings of nothing and night as I initially suspected. They are pretty awesome friends, too. They stick with Finn through thick and thin, helping her in her mad schemes to uncover secrets and eventually help Jack.
Thorn Jack was enchanting. That is literally the only way I can describe something so beautiful and haunting at the same time. I loved each of the characters- they all had such depth and personality that they really just came alive in my mind. Jack was great- his slowly revealed history was stunningly heartbreaking and I was rooting for Finn+Jack the whole way through. Characters like Caliban and Reiko were disgustingly cruel at times, but aren’t faeries supposed to be monsters? Thorn Jack is THE BEST faerie tale I’ve read since the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr, and may be even better than that. It’s a must read for anyone who likes faerie stories, urban fantasy, or retellings.
The Fata’s are creepy- they are wealthy, but no one knows where they live and there are old pictures of their relatives that look identical to them. Everything points at something wrong here, but Finn gets involved with them anyways, attending parties and inviting Jack Fata into her home when she barely knows him. You can’t just go inviting people in when the book is clearly about faeries. Which it is. Surprisingly, it ended up being a very appropriate pre-Halloween read and I really enjoyed it. I was even more excited to learn that there is a second book called Briar Queen.
I really liked how strange the town of Fair Hollow was- it was described as having all these huge dilapidated mansion, weird shops, and a liberal arts college with mythological décor that really belongs in a museum. Parties were hosted at the abandoned mansions by Reiko, Jack, and family on several occasions and they didn’t always turn out so well for the humans there. The people there (actual people, not faeries) were just as strange and unique as the mysterious Fata’s. Finn’s new friends Christy and Sylvie turn out to actually be humans, not otherworldy beings of nothing and night as I initially suspected. They are pretty awesome friends, too. They stick with Finn through thick and thin, helping her in her mad schemes to uncover secrets and eventually help Jack.
Thorn Jack was enchanting. That is literally the only way I can describe something so beautiful and haunting at the same time. I loved each of the characters- they all had such depth and personality that they really just came alive in my mind. Jack was great- his slowly revealed history was stunningly heartbreaking and I was rooting for Finn+Jack the whole way through. Characters like Caliban and Reiko were disgustingly cruel at times, but aren’t faeries supposed to be monsters? Thorn Jack is THE BEST faerie tale I’ve read since the Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr, and may be even better than that. It’s a must read for anyone who likes faerie stories, urban fantasy, or retellings.
One of my favorite Fairport Convention songs is Tam Lin & I was excited to read a new book based on the song.
I thought that the modernization of the setting and atmosphere worked surprisingly well.
Unfortunately there seemed to be too much of a contemporary "Twilight-ish" romance played up. I want my captive bard to be charismatic and talented. This guy was just brooding and creepy. (In fact his repetitive "I'm bleeding" reminded me of the awful BvS tag line. Ponderous.)
I thought that the modernization of the setting and atmosphere worked surprisingly well.
Unfortunately there seemed to be too much of a contemporary "Twilight-ish" romance played up. I want my captive bard to be charismatic and talented. This guy was just brooding and creepy. (In fact his repetitive "I'm bleeding" reminded me of the awful BvS tag line. Ponderous.)
This book began to meander in the middle and never fully recovered, but I give it props for some truly menacing fairies. I'm sincerely curious about the background of the world, as well, but not enough, I think, to sit through two more books of a relationship with Jack. Maybe someday.
THORN JACK is a bit of a mind trip. The setting is suitably trippy, the characters are realistic even if they aren't human, and the romance is tortured. There were points when the writing seemed unnecessarily drawn out, but I couldn't stop reading. Our heroine, Finn, moves to Fair Hollow with her father for his teaching job, and to escape painful memories of her sister's suicide and her mother's death. So we have a fish out of water story right off--but something is different in Fair Hollow. Something sinister, even supernatural. And then Finn meets Jack, and his friends--and Finn becomes caught up in something out of a fairy tale, and not a Disney one.
There are a lot of elements in THORN JACK that will remind readers of other books. The university echoes Hogwarts, the romance treads close to TWILIGHT territory, and the plot, with its labyrinthine politics and shifting loyalties, will call to mind Shakespeare's tragedies. The story itself is based on the fairy tale of Tam Lin, which I've never actually gotten around to looking up, and I should, since a lot of stories use it as a foundation. The characters have realistic lives, and the atmosphere is evocative and dark (which really should be a clue to anyone; when all the houses look abandoned but play host to awesome, hallucinogenic parties, shouldn't you be suspicious?). Sometimes I was frustrated with the pace of the novel; at one point I would be reading pretty fast, and be interested, but other points the story would turn convoluted and loop back on itself ("hey, wait, didn't she already do that?"), and my reading speed (and my enjoyment) took a dive. Occasionally the descriptions delved into creepy visuals, sometimes breaking me out of the story with the shock.
For a debut novel, THORN JACK is pretty good. The plot could use a little tightening, and the magic needs a more solid base. There are more stories in this world, so maybe we'll find out who (what?) the Fatas really are in a future novel. If you like your dark fantasy with a side of gothic mythology, check out THORN JACK. I'm interested to see what else this author has to say.
Received as a free digital ARC via Edleweiss in exchange for an honest review.
There are a lot of elements in THORN JACK that will remind readers of other books. The university echoes Hogwarts, the romance treads close to TWILIGHT territory, and the plot, with its labyrinthine politics and shifting loyalties, will call to mind Shakespeare's tragedies. The story itself is based on the fairy tale of Tam Lin, which I've never actually gotten around to looking up, and I should, since a lot of stories use it as a foundation. The characters have realistic lives, and the atmosphere is evocative and dark (which really should be a clue to anyone; when all the houses look abandoned but play host to awesome, hallucinogenic parties, shouldn't you be suspicious?). Sometimes I was frustrated with the pace of the novel; at one point I would be reading pretty fast, and be interested, but other points the story would turn convoluted and loop back on itself ("hey, wait, didn't she already do that?"), and my reading speed (and my enjoyment) took a dive. Occasionally the descriptions delved into creepy visuals, sometimes breaking me out of the story with the shock.
For a debut novel, THORN JACK is pretty good. The plot could use a little tightening, and the magic needs a more solid base. There are more stories in this world, so maybe we'll find out who (what?) the Fatas really are in a future novel. If you like your dark fantasy with a side of gothic mythology, check out THORN JACK. I'm interested to see what else this author has to say.
Received as a free digital ARC via Edleweiss in exchange for an honest review.
dark
medium-paced
As wild and strange and hallucinogenic as the best of fairy nightmares. Dark and rich, a lovely gothic painting of horrifying bargains with otherworldly fae folk. I enjoyed it very much, and although there are more ruined mansions than can possibly be believed, at least their whimsical architecture entertains.
I also just appreciate the extremes of the book -- This is a fully committed romance, in a thoroughly dark setting, juxtaposed with an idyllic fairy-story type college and really intricate fashion choices.
I also just appreciate the extremes of the book -- This is a fully committed romance, in a thoroughly dark setting, juxtaposed with an idyllic fairy-story type college and really intricate fashion choices.
I know that other reviewers on this site were fairly harsh with this first time novel, but I quite enjoyed it. I liked the characters, the premise, and the writing style. If this is her first novel, first of a series, then I believe she will only become more polished as she carries on with her lovely and strange town she has created. And I will be more than happy to return.