Wings by Aprilynne Pike

Wings by Aprilynne Pike


Laurel was mesmerized, staring at the pale things with wide eyes. They were terrifyingly beautiful—too beautiful for words.
Laurel turned to the mirror again, her eyes on the hovering petals that floated beside her head. They looked almost like wings.
In this extraordinary tale of magic and intrigue, romance and danger, everything you thought you knew about faeries will be changed forever.



I probably shouldn't have read this.  If you read the pre-read section at the bottom of the review, you'll see that I didn't even intend to order it.  Yet, since I had it, I thought I'd give it a go.

I lasted 24 pages because that's all my sanity could take. 

Laurel is a magazine-beautiful, waif-like teenager who leaves homeschooling in grade 10 in order to begin her high school career. 

And that's when the story stops making sense.  Not that the above makes any sense either.  Models in magazines aren't even as airbrushed beautiful as models in magazines.  I would just like to point that out now.

The comment could fly past as poor characterization and sloppy writing if it didn't go hand in hand with Laurel's horrible relationship with food.  In fact, a great deal of emphasis is placed on what she eats.  Once again, not entirely a problem except attention is also placed on how she feels when she eats.  Which is guilty and "like a battle has been lost" when she eats half a pear and half a cup of juice. 


I know, random guy, I know.

The writing is just terrible and the characterization can't even be mentioned because I'm pretty sure Goodread's lax profanity rules would not cover what I would end up saying.

Mostly, it's all so very saccharine sweet and ickly chaste, yet oddly kinky and unbelievably tame. I feel like I'm describing Disneyland here, but if I do, that might make people think of fun.  Notice I deliberately left fun off the list.  But, luckily, there was comparable amounts of vomit. 

Spoilers below, folks.

Apparently.  APPARENTLY, Laurel is not actually a human, but a fairy.  And the reason she is a vegan is because she is a plant.  Like, as in, she is not a red blooded mammal but is an actual plant...





I'm sorry, I'm going to need a judge's ruling on that.


Thank you. Steve Carell.  I think you've said it all.

Look, you just.  You don't do that.  You just...don't.  I mean, what school of biology did you go to?  The Stephanie Meyer School of Biology, that's what!

I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't 8th grade biology talk a lot about how plants photosynthesize to make energy and how they do respire but at night when there's no light and about how they don't have things like digestive systems and they don't have blood but, hey they do have Chloroplasts and Chlorophylls.  And how they don't digest nutrients by eating them but by absorbing them through their roots.  There just doesn't seem to be a lot of thought put into this.

I mean, look at organs like the brain.  How does her brain work?  They need A LOT Of protein.  A huge amount actually.  Which you can get by eating a healthy vegan diet, but she's not even doing that. 

Scientists don't look at an ape-like creature and have this conversation:

"So, Doctor Rosenbaum, what do you think it is?  Mammal?  Reptile?  Plant?  Rock?"
"I don't know.  I just don't know.  If only there was some way of determining these things!  Look, just to be safe, put it down as a bird.  Just because it doesn't fly - doesn't mean it can't!"

I used to think that the old troll argument of, "You're overthinking it!  Stop thinking so much and you'll enjoy it!" was full of shit.  But, in this case, they're right.  My highly developed mammalian brain just can not handle this level of stupidity.  But even if I could somehow switch it off.  Well, there enough other bad stuff in here that would spoil it anyway.

_____________________________________________Pre-read comments______________________________________



I'm not entirely sure why I'm reading this.  For some reason I thought there was some controversy over this author and that I'd barred it, but it's not on my Do Not Read shelf so I must have been mistaken. 

I went to pick up books from the library this afternoon and it was among them.  I don't clearly remember ordering it so I asked for the order date and went home to Mr. Kennedy.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hey honey, was I drinking heavily on the 15th of December?"
Mr Kennedy: "Hmmm...the 15th was a Thursday.  That's Corona day."
Me: "Ugh.  Okay, definitely drunk.  That explains it."
Mr Kennedy: "Let me guess, you found traffic cones and police hats again?"
Me: *Thinks for a second* "That probably would have been the preferable outcome."




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