The Forgotten Ones by Laura Howard

TL;DR New Adult with faeries

added to TBR on Aug 2, 2016 (didn't record number OTL)

finished 8/17/16

I got this book for free thanks to Bookbub. I don't think it was on my TBR before that, so I just took a chance on it.

I marathoned this book the same afternoon I finished Wings, which, at less than 200 pages, wasn't an impossible feat. It was fairly easy to get through. Half the problem with that was that I wasn't stopping to dwell on anything that was going on.

I didn't realize it was a New Adult when I downloaded it, so once I realized Allison was old enough to legally drink, I lost some of the (small) interest I'd had. I haven't found a taste for NA yet but I decided to continue reading since I wanted to see how it would handle the concept of faeries. I didn't expect to find this premise in a NA book.

It was underwhelming. The plot like it felt a while to get going, and then even when the ball was rolling, I didn't really care much about what was going on. I didn't care enough about any of the characters to really care what they were going through, and even without that, the plot felt contrived. The involvement of the faeries was lackluster compared to what I was hoping and it didn't quite fit the book or add to the stakes like it should have.

I mainly didn't like Allison because she was a pushover and didn't really change. Her cousin easily talked her into things she "didn't want to do" and continually let her do it instead of digging in her heels or pitching a fit. The guy Allison liked wasn't characterized all that consistently, and he was weak as a love interest. Allison's family felt shallow and I'm frustrated that her mother's mental illness wasn't "real", but something caused by magic and easily fixable. That's not a healthy narrative -- mental illness can be terrible, but it's not something that goes away just like that. We shouldn't pretend that mental illness is easily fixable and that the person will go back to the way they used to be.

(I think maybe it would've been slightly better if there weren't a way to reverse what had happened to Allison's mother, but even at that, it's still unhealthy to frame mental illness as a kind of curse.)

The resolution of the book wasn't very interesting -- I was never worried about the outcome -- and when the cliffhanger was introduced in the last sentence, I was like "ha, sucks for them" and left it at that. I have no interest in what might come in the next book.

TL;DR I was really indifferent to the book as a whole, but it wasn't quite a waste of time since it was small and free.