Title: Haffling
Series: Haffling, 01
Author: Caleb James
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy/Young Adult,
Length: Novel (274 pages)
Publisher: Harmony Ink Press Dreamspinner (July 11th, 2013)
Product link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3976
Heat Level: Low
Heart Rating: ♥♥♥3Hearts
Blurb: All sixteen-year-old Alex Nevus wants is to be two years older and become his sister Alice’s legal guardian. That, and he’d like his first kiss, preferably with Jerod Haynes, the straight boy with the beautiful girlfriend and the perfect life. Sadly, wanting something and getting it are very different. Strapped with a mentally ill mother, Alex fears for his own sanity. Having a fairy on his shoulder only he can see doesn’t help, and his mom’s schizophrenia places him and Alice in constant jeopardy of being carted back into foster care.
When Alex’s mother goes missing, everything falls apart. Frantic, he tracks her to a remote corner of Manhattan and is transported to another dimension—the land of the Unsee, the realm of the Fey. There he finds his mother held captive by the power-mad Queen May and learns he is half-human and half-fey—a Haffling.
As Alex’s human world is being destroyed, the Unsee is being devoured by a ravenous mist. Fey is vanishing, and May needs to cross into the human world. She needs something only Alex can provide, and she will stop at nothing to possess it… to possess him.
Reviewer: Pammie
Review: A YA fantasy tale, first in the Haffling series.
I found this book quite hard going, although by the end I was rooting hard out for Alex and Jerod. The fey here are far from friendly. The world is complex, and interwoven with fairy tales we all know. Given it’s YA, some of the things that didn’t appeal to me, like the TV setting used, may appeal to a different audience. Alex and Jerod make a good team, and I really hope they ultimately have a HEA. May is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, instead of trying to save her own world, she seeks to enter the human world, and rule there, using Alex as her bridge. The power struggle to free Alex from her domination was edge-of-seat stuff.
If you like fantasy, twists on familiar fairy tales, series, YA, and a HFN, this is for you.