The Girl Who Never Was ~ Review

The Girl Who Never Was (Otherworld #1)
By Skylar Dorset

Rating: 4.7



'Maybe no one should claim me at all(...) Maybe I'm just me. Why has no one considered that ever, in my entire life? I'm more than just a pawn in some stupid prophecy.'


Hold on to your magical sweater & get ready for the ride of a lifetime!

This book was fantastically, wonderfully, confusingly perfect. 

I cannot describe it in any other way but this: reading The Girl Who Never Was is like picking up an apple, biting into it, and discovering that it's actually filled with your favourite ice-cream (for those who are curious, my favourite ice-cream is Gelatissimo's lime gelato. I'd take that over an apple any day!)

Weird. Intriguing. And amazing!

But more importantly, it's filled with 'double take' moments. Times where I had to turn back the page and re-read a section a few times before it fully sunk in. Because let's face it - not all of us were born as faerie princesses/faerie travelers/wizards/ogres.

Some us are utterly (and miserably) mundane.

And for us mundane beings, it's sometimes hard to understand a book whose plot is deeply embedded in many, many riddle-like explanations.

I don't believe that the heroine receives even one straight answer to any of her (a.k.a the reader's) questions during the entire book.

I feel the heroine's frustration. Because hip hip hooray - every other character knows what's going on! Isn't that swell...for them. But hey, I'm here too. And I don't have the faintest clue what the hell is going on.

Does she have a mum? Oh, wait, her mum's trying to kill her? Ok...but hang on, how come when she meets her mother, she doesn't kill her? What's the deal with escaping inescapable places? Do promises count for anything with faeries? Why aren't all debts stitched?

In the words of the King of Siam from The King And I, "Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera."

The list of confusing questions goes on and on. But what remains is a weird sense of understanding.

This may just be the first book ever where being confused has made sense, besides A.G. Howard's Splintered series. It's like...we're never meant to know everything. And that what we know isn't true and is ever-changing.

There are no rules.

And we, as readers, have a strict set of rules when it comes to what we expect books to do and/ contain. But the thing is, this world that the author has created has no rules. It takes on a life of its own and even the main characters are left confused as the tables are turned time and time again.

It's part of the weird and wonderful magic this book possesses. I finished the book feeling a mixture of emotions - ranging from "What the hell just happened?" to "I want more!"

That said...I want more!

That cliffhanger had me as angry as a cat dunked into the middle of a pond. Not at the book - but at that lovely character who decided to forget everything they'd gone through and threw everything away for nothing.

I mean, I finished that book at 1am...so perhaps I wasn't totally rational at that point. But I really did think that the character of the character who 'turned', so to speak, really did a 180 spin during that last chapter.

Has that ever happened to you guys - where a character just out of the blue changes dramatically in the course of a few chapters? It reminded me of the drastic change in Adam in Ignite Me. And it annoyed me a little, especially since I was really starting to like that character, too!

Not to mention I just looked up Book #2 on GR to find out it comes out in December! So close and yet so far!

So if you're a fan of Alice-In-Wonderland-ish, fae-inspired stories, I really recommend giving this book a shot. In the meantime, happy reading! <3