It's always exciting to find a new take on the fairies and enchanted places. This book takes place in Washington state, not a place I'd ever associate with the fair folk, so I had to take a peek! It was a easy fast paced story that I think Middle grades, say 5th grade to 8th, will likely enjoy reading. I can't imagine anyone being disappointed by it at all. It's well written, there's adventure, no so nice relatives....a little something for every reader.

Great modern fairy tale for the tween YA set. A much darker portrayal of faeries than you are probably used to, but a very good one. Not too scary so good for those that like creepy stories but aren't ready for horror. The twist at the end is a good one and even though I found this a little fluffy for my tastes, I'm definitely going to track down the second one of these just to see what happens.

Forests of the Fae: Devlin's Door was a very quick and fast-paced read. I was actually very interested in this book as I love anything to do with magic, evil fairies and different realms. I have also just found out that this is actually the first book in a series, which is quite interesting. I don't know much about the second book, but it would be interesting to see what it's like and if it's any better than this one.

When thirteen-year-old Anne is sent to spend the summer with her dreadful relatives in a small Washington state town, she is left with little hope that anything intriguing will happen to her. However, when she learns of an abandoned town full of old Victorian homes hidden in the woods nearby, she embraces the lore and becomes bolstered by the idea that an adventure might await.

Her sadistic cousin Lexie feeds Anne's curiosity and leads her to the mysterious town in the woods, where Anne is goaded by her cousin and friends to enter one of the abandoned homes, alone, and is locked inside.

While searching for a way out, Anne stumbles through a hole in the floor and unknowingly falls into an ominous, ghost-filled mystery. As she digs deeper into the secrets of this house, she discovers a weathered journal that reveals a magic-infused history hundreds of years old and a tragic secret: a curse has trapped the town and its inhabitants in a place not meant to be found by humans.

Even though this book is 236 pages, it just seemed to be really rushed. I'm going to try and keep this review as concise as I can but I have a feeling that this is going to be a long one. Let's start with the plot... I think that Kibbee had a very interesting idea here. A girl moves to a weird town, discovers an abandoned town and a magical doorway to a fairy realm. It is a very brilliant concept but I think that Kibbee could have at least had another 100 more pages to just add some more detail to certain elements of the book, and to take the time to expand of a few story arcs. For one, the boy that we meet on the train whilst Anne is travelling to her aunt and uncle's house... What happened to him? We were introduced to him, and he was in the book for about 5 pages. I think that he could have been included more in the book as he was the first person to divulge information about the abandoned town to Anne.

Then there's Anne's cousin: Lexie. Wow, she was just awful. Well-written, but I absolutely hated her. I really don't get why she was so horrible to Anne. Yeah ok, she wanted to impress her friends, but there's being a show-off and then just being evil.





"The beasts' backs were turned, and with bodies nearly identical in color to their forest surroundings, their features were difficult to distinguish. They were huddled around a makeshift pit, and they held long, slender hands over it, as if warming them by a fire, though none burned there. Both were crouching and alternated between miming enjoyment of the imaginary heat and balancing on the ground, as would apes. Their bodies were long and thin, with rib bones exposed beneath taut, dirty flesh."

- K. Kibbee, Forests of the Fae: Devlin's Door





One of the things that I really loved about this book was that *minor spoilers ahead* Anne could bring the town to life by reading Grace's diary aloud. Slowly, the town started coming back to life, but along with that, the evil magic started to creep back to life as well and the faeries started to take back control of the abandoned town. The beginning of the book was actually written at a really good pace, but as soon as the plot started to pick up and we were introduced to the magic, everything just seemed to whizz by - and not in a good way. I felt like I was being thrown into the deep end of the novel and I had no idea what was going on. Things just seemed to happen for no reason, people were introduced with no build up and then suddenly, the book ended.

But! I will say this, the ending was absolutely brilliant and now it makes complete sense that there is actually a second book. Hopefully, it wraps everything up. Even though I didn't really enjoy this book because of the pacing, I'm actually looking forward to reading the second book as I am hoping that it will clarify a few things from Devlin's Door and take the time to wrap up the story.

Disclaimer: this book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Forests of the fae is the first book of a story about a girl called Anne who, by a series of events, starts unraveling the mysteries of a ghost town in Washington. As she gets deeper and deeper involved with this supernatural world, fairies, magic and unsolved mysteries emerge. Oh, but don't be fooled by the idea of whimsical pixies wearing pink tutu skirts, as Anne says: "Boy, did Disney have it wrong"...

I love how the story evolves from a typical "city girl is sent to small town to live with her relatives and obnoxious cousin" to a thicker plot with a lot of mysterious characters and twists and turns throughout the rest of the story. It keeps you hooked from the beginning. The storytelling is great as well, it speeds up and slows down matching the swiftness of events or the struggles in Anne's journey and has a cinematic feel to it. A must-read series for urban fantasy fans.

Anne was on a train to visit a place she had never been before to stay with an unknown aunt and uncle because her parents were on a Missions trip to Africa.while on the bus she is told about a town where people had vanished a hundred years ago.
Anne is taken to this village by her cousin, Lexie, who is meeting up with her friends. They force Anne to go into one of the old houses, where she finds a secret room, a trunk, and a journal that belonged to a girl named Grace.
Grace tries to find out about the town, but no one knows much about it and they tell her to stay away from it.
Grace goes back to the secret room and she starts reading from the journal - she reads about Grace's family and all of a sudden boards appear above her head and fill in a hole above her head - as if by magic!
Anne meets Grace when she is looking in a bakery window at some treats that appeared on a shelf.
You will have to read the book to find out what happens to them - will they find the secret of the missing people?

Ok let me just start by saying I'm not sure why both versiosn on goodreads say there are 230ish pages because my copy was 150 pages and although you kind of just have to take it on faith for an ebook version, it definitely felt like 150 pages and not 230. It probably would have been better at 200+ pages because my main complaint with this book is that it seemed a little bit rushed.

It was a good concept and I love to see how different authors build up their own fairy mythology. That said, I would have liked the fairies to feature a bit more prominently, it would have been interesting to see the girls communicate with them in some way to actually learn more about them. I did enjoy it but the characters seemed a bit two-dimensional and the plot moved a little bit too quickly and easily, it seemed like every time they needed something it was just dropped into their laps.

However, this is primarily a middle grade book and I think it would be a fun and engaging read for children, it just isn't one of those middle grade books that translates well to adult reading.

Delight tale of girl who encountered a secret that changed her life. I think this book is more geared to midle school then ya gnere.

Kibbee can write, there is no question about that but I think her audience might be younger than she anticipated. While Forests of the Fae has a clever premise I think the execution is a little week, especially though the first forty or so pages.

My first main criticism is that dialogue between Anne, Lexie and Lexie's assorted friends doesn't match their characters. They are 13 and 15 years old, respectively, but their language is closer to that of a fifth graders. Never have I heard teenagers speak as they did during the first half of this novel. Oddly, Anne's dialogue becomes more reminiscent of her age once Grace enters the picture. As the situation becomes more serious, so does her language.

Kibbee has a penchant for description to the point of it being distracting. I do not need a metaphor or simile for every new thing Anne encounters, every piece of dialogue doesn't need it's own special description, "said" is frequently sufficient no matter how often it has been told that the word is boring and could be replaced with something more "interesting." An off shoot of this is the description of those around Anne being more informative than the information she is receiving. You can't tell me that the information she gained in the library was sufficient to scare her away from Devlin when more time was spent on how the librarian was looking at her.

This is not to say I didn't enjoy the book for what it was, I think it had amazing potential since the different colour fairy books are so prolific in childhood. The extremely dark take on the fae and the subsequent ending are innovative, even if the end could be rather expected. I wanted to be surprised by things, I wanted to be able to suspend my disbelief but the actions of the characters (or lack thereof) stopped me from doing so.

I think this book could do with another edit, and some serious tweaking. But, there will be those who think it is perfect just the way it is which is just fine. I am not one of those people. However, I look forward to seeing what else Kibbee has to offer.