Book Log: Fairest, The Black Tattoo, Fly on the Wall

22. Fairest, by Gail Carson Levine

Aza is not just not pretty: she is downright ugly. Tall and broad with an unpleasant complexion and dull black hair, she is so unattractive that she was abandoned by her (probably noble) parents in a room in the Featherbed Inn when she was a baby. Luck was on her side, however, and her adoptive parents raised her with love. Now, as an adult, Aza posesses one of her country's most prized talents - a powerful and beautiful singing voice. Through a twist of fate, Aza finds herself journeying to the royal court for the royal wedding - and winds up in the favor of the beautiful new queen. What seems like royal good luck soon becomes royal danger as the queen forces Aza to use her talents in her service. Aza must figure her way out of a royal mess before she ends up dead or worse.

With Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine hit the nail on the head. Ella was the perfect rewritten fairy tale - a compelling plot independant of the familiar fairy tale, an engaging heroine, a genuinely likeable prince, and truly despicable villains, not to mention a structure for the story that made perfect sense. In Fairest, GCL tries to capture the same magic again, and fails miserably. It's the same formula, but it doesn't work as well. Aza isn't half as likeable as Ella, with her desperate longing to be pretty, and the prince feels like we're supposed to like him because GCL thinks he should be likeable - but he isn't, at all. The whole structure, with the Ayorthan emphasis on singing, feels forced and kind of stupid. The twists feel unnatural. It reads like the poorer, less interesting cousin of Ella Enchanted. Completely underwhelming.

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23. The Black Tattoo, by Sam Enthoven

Jack's best friend, Charlie, has always been cooler than him. So when Charlie is chosen out of the blue to be the leader of a mysterious demon-fighting Brotherhood, Jack can't help but follow his friend. But when Charlie sports a moving black tattoo on his back overnight, and starts exhibiting superpowers, Jack begins to worry - and rightly so. Because Charlie hasn't just joined a secret Brotherhood - he's actually been possessed by the very demon they are sworn to fight, and the demon is using Charlie as a pawn in his quest to destroy all of existance. And so, Jack and Esme, a girl who has trained all her life to fight the demon, will follow Charlie into the very depths of Hell to stop the demon and save Charlie - if they can.

The cover copy was intriguing. The book, however, was nothing like I anticipated. Charlie gets possessed very suddenly, before we have a chance to care about him, or Jack. Esme is introduced, but only barely - we hardly know her enough to care about her. And before we know it, our characters have been catapulted into Hell, which is another dimension, accessable through a pub, where everything changes. The story segways into a demonic gladiator scenario, and then jumps and jumps again, from plot point to derivative plot point. The story as a whole, I suppose, is original, but it's so choppy that it's hard to follow or even care. The characters are undeveloped, to the point that I found that I really didn't care if they lived or died. This book is totally and completely forgettable.

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24. Fly on the Wall, by E. Lockhart

Gretchen Yee, a student at a prestigious Manhattan Art High School, has problems - in a school where unique is cool and the same is dorky, she is tragically normal. She eats lunch alone. Her best (and only) friend Katya has starting brushing her off. Her parents are getting a divorce. And she can barely manage to speak two words to the boy she has a crush on. One day, Gretchen idly wishes that she could be a fly on the wall in the boy's locker room. The next day, she wakes up, and she is. While wondering how she turned into a fly and wondering how to turn back, Gretchen is treated to a front row seat of all of the goings on of the boys locker room. From locker room conversation to boys undressing, Gretchen sees it all - and learns a lot more about the male half of her classmates than she ever expected to.

E. Lockhart's books (previous books listed on this book log: The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book) always feel a little bit less than substantial to me. They feel light, airy, like they're missing some crucial element that would elevate them from beach reading to solid teen fiction. This book is no exception. It's fun, certainly, but Gretchen is only a smidge away from unlikeable. There's no real character growth, no real revelation of any sort - in fact, the only ways Gretchen has changed at the end of the book (aside from the fly transformation) is based on things she has overheard in the locker room, not on new thoughts she has come up with on her own. It just felt, I don't know, too easy. Too quick. This is unquestionably a fun read, but it is no way meaty or substantial.