Melissa Marr

When I was in Forbidden Planet on Tuesday, waiting for Garth Nix, I spent some considerable amount of time gazing at the shelves, assessing the books (an entire floor of fantasy, amazing!). While I was doing that, I spent a while looking at the name of an author (Melissa Marr), convinced that I knew who she was/something she had written.
It was only about ten minutes later that I realised that Melissa Marr is the author of the Wicked Lovely series, the five books I had spent the last week or two reading my way through.

I think that basically sums up the Wicked Lovely series. Perfectly acceptable, but not really memorable.

Now, I have to admit, my main attraction to Wicked Lovely was a main character who spelled her name with two Ns. I’ve mentioned that before, a few times. I am an egomaniac, apparently.

However, I decided to work my way through the entire series, just to make sure that I could form an accurate opinion of it.

And in the end? Well, I enjoyed it, but it was all a bit light and fluffy. I never really got drawn in, and I never really felt any tension in, well, anything.
Everything felt a bit happy-clappy and you just knew that there would be happy endings all around in the end.

It was diverting enough, though. I won’t discuss too much of the plot, because I’d probably spoil major plot points of all the books trying to explain what happened next, but it was a good enough read.

It really reminded me of Holly Black’s Tithe, with its Summer, Winter, High and Dark Courts strongly resembling Tithe’s Seelie and Unseelie Courts.
But I think I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Tithe – evidently I did, as I kept reading beyond the first book, not something I actually bothered to do with the Black faery books.

The spelling of faery really annoyed me. It reminded me of a fifteen year old girl trying to be different and special, when really all she ends up looking is pretentious, but that was a minor annoyance.
I also found it a little disconcerting to read corruptions of Gaelic words throughout the books. But that’s probably due to my own heritage and knowledge of Irish, so it’s not really something that would affect too many people. I feel particularly protective of Celtic lore, but Marr did create a very intriguing and quite diverting world of fey.

Three stars for the whole series. All the books blend into one for me, so I can’t rate them individually.
***

The five books are:
Wicked Lovely,
Ink Exchange,
Radiant Shadows,
Darkest Mercy,
Fragile Eternity.

I’m not entirely sure I have the order right there, but anyways.

One last point – the cover arts are gorgeous. Especially Ink Exchange.