Fairylicious / Tiffany Nicole Smith

Reviewed by: Sooz

Genre: Middle Grade

Approximate word count: 50-55,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: NO  Paper: YES

Click on a YES above to go to appropriate page in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords store

Author:

Tiffany Nicole Smith is a teacher and writes for young adults. She lives in South Florida and enjoys horror, action and fantasy movies.

For more, visit the author’s website.

Description:

Bex Carter is a misunderstood sixth grader who can’t seem to do anything right. She still believes in fairies even though all of her friends have grown out of that phase. On her birthday, Bex wishes for fairies for her friends, but when they show up things don’t go exactly as she hoped.

Appraisal:

The premise of Fairylicious intrigued me. A young girl wishes for fairies on her birthday, and her wish actually comes true. But there’s a problem – there is always a problem. The fairies are a bit off and every wish they grant comes true, but not in a perfect way one would expect from fairies.

Bex Carter, a sixth grader, is a likable character even if she constantly finds herself in trouble because she’s misunderstood. Her parents are out of the picture and their grandmother is raising her and her younger sister.

However, I felt there were some issues from the get go. Bex is a female athlete, the only one in her school, and her classmates, especially the popular girls, ridicule her for it. I dislike the idea that a girl can’t be athletic without it being an issue for others. Perhaps, I take this personally because I played sports and was on sports teams from middle school through college, but I never had an issue as Bex did in school, and I feel it portrays girls who want to be athletic in a bad light.

In addition, the fairy portion of the story started too late – 25 percent of the way into the book before they showed up – and the book’s ending fell flat compared to the rest of the story. I am not even sure the fairies were necessary to the story.

Fairylicious could have used a tightened storyline to make it flow better.

It was cute and did well at portraying attitudes of pre-teens. I also enjoyed the friendship between Bex and her friends.

I just felt very disappointed by the end.

FYI:

This the first book in a series.

Format/Typo Issues:

The version I received didn’t have breaks in the right place and jumped from one section to the next without warning.

Rating: ***Three Stars