The Boy with the Hidden Name (Otherworld #2)
By Skylar Dorset
Rating: 5+
'I look at my aunts, hesitate, and then say, "What-"
My aunts have gone back to knitting, even more furiously than before.
"You're going to be late for school," Aunt True says, and that is the end of that attempt at conversation.
My aunts hate it when I ask questions. It tends to destroy the world.'
You can't hide from your destiny forever.
Selkie Stewart has been through the adventure of a lifetime. Now, all she wants to do is be a normal girl who does normal things - such as eating ice-cream and complaining about unreliable faerie quasi-boyfriends.
The only thing standing in her way? The Seelies who are planning to take over the world when the clock strikes twelve.
With the end of Thisworld drawing closer with every tick of the clock, Selkie has not choice but to leave all thoughts of a normal life behind as she sets out on a journey to find the key to saving the world.
Because if anyone can find something, it's Selkie. Whether she knows it or not.
Plans, prophecies and painful predicaments lie ahead.
Selkie needs to find the other three fays - and fast - if they want to fulfil the prophecy and keeping the invading Seelie at bay. But the only person who might know where those three fay are is Benedict Le Fay's mother.
The same woman that Ben left Selkie to search for. A woman not exactly known for her trustworthiness, and who has been missing for many years.
With mixed feelings where Ben is concerned, Selkie joins her friends on a trip to the Unseelie Court to search for Ben's mother and Ben.
But the line between friend and foe isn't clear cut, and there's more than one Otherworld creature who would gladly manipulate or even kill Selkie to stop the prophecy from being fulfilled.
Never trust a faerie...especially with your heart.
With the fate of the world on her shoulders, Selkie's only hope is the prophecy. She needs to be the girl everyone seems to believe she is, no matter what it takes. This fight is no longer about her, or about the Seelie Court. It's about the people she loves and the people she can't leave behind.
But one little secret will change everything.
Because those around her have kept a part of the prophecy secret - a part that not only predicts the loss of someone she loves, but that also fractures Selkie's faith in her own destiny.
Is Selkie the one who'll save the world? Or is she the one who'll brings it to its knees?
With spot-on humour, Wonderland-esque logic, and magical twists and turns, Skylar Dorset's The Boy with the Hidden Name is an example of YA fiction at its best.
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
