Mirror, Mirror, on the wall,
Who is the Fairest of them all?

In the sequel to UnEnchanted, Mina Grime discovers that all is not fair when it comes to the Fae and their tales, especially when they don’t all play by the rules. Barely surviving the Story’s first fairy tale quest, Mina still has hundreds to go before she can end the curse on her family. But a new player arises to challenge Mina while new rules revamp the game she has just barely begun to understand.

All the while, people are mysteriously disappearing, including Jared, whom Mina must finally determine to be friend or foe. And with the loss of her greatest weapon, Mina must try to outwit a deadly hunter. Can Mina survive the most difficult quest yet while protecting those she loves from falling victim to one of the lethal tales of all? Or will she become a pawn when she strikes a bargain with the Queen of Fae

Book two and we are spending time with Mina again as she works on completing the stories and lifting the curse from her family. This time Mina is going to find out that things are even more difficult than she first thought they were, and things were hard before. Mina learns a hard lesson that the Fae especially the Sidhe never play fair when it comes to making deals and getting things their own way, even in their own fairy tales. If Mina didn’t have it hard enough, she loses the Grimoire and Jared, while other people are going missing too.

“Even a pawn can take down a queen.”

This is my favorite sentence from the entire book, of course it is one I have heard before anyways, but I will always like it. Much like the first book of the series I really enjoyed this book. I admit there were a few more things in this one that annoyed me, and that is why I couldn’t give it the full 5 gems. I really wanted to because the book is captivating. It deepens a lot of the characters and it is the kind of book you can enjoy in one short sitting and then move onto the next.

So you ask what annoyed you then Ambrosia?

Sad to say Mina annoyed me a fair amount. I know this is YA and you are going to see that happen with YA, but oh man I just wanted to shake her sometimes. Perhaps that is a reflection on me and getting older. There were a lot of times where Mina was very selfish and so impatient she did more harm than good for things. I hope this is just part of the growth of the character, that her impatience will be something that improves as the series goes. But I will admit for this book, it really did annoy me, she could have saved herself a lot of trouble by being a little bit more patient. Mina did seem to grow a bit near the end of the book, so perhaps that is a glimpse at things to come.

Of course I also just adore Jared, at this point I feel like I enjoy him more than Mina. He is one of those male characters that has depth and you would love to spend time with in real life. To sum it all up, this is a solid installment and enough to make me more than likely read the next in the series soon.

My Gemstone Rating:

Mina Grime is unlucky, unpopular and uncoordinated; until she saves her crush’s life on a field trip, changing her High School status from loser to hero overnight. But with her new found fame brings misfortune in the form of an old family curse come to light. For Mina is descended from the Brothers Grimm and has inherited all of their unfinished fairy tale business. Which includes trying to outwit a powerful Story from making her it’s next fairytale victim.

To break the fairy tale curse on her family and make these deadly occurrences stop, Mina must finish the tales until the very Grimm end.

 

I admit I loved the show Grimm as soon as it came out. While I am behind on the seasons of the show, these days I still love the idea of there being Grimm’s in the world and all the fun supernatural going on’s that goes with it. So of course, when I got a chance to pick this book up as a freebie I was happy to do it. Poor Mina is just a girl who is a klutz and not very popular in school. Essentially, she just wants to get through High school, call it a day and move on with life. Then of course she ends up saving her crush’s life and everything starts to change in her life.
Mina has to make her way through life while all the fairy tales we have ever heard of (and then some) essentially try to take her out. The curse of the family means they have to follow the stories, play them out use a little help from the Grimoire and make it out alive. No one in her entire family history has ever reached the end of the curse, beating all the stories so that the curse can be lifted. If that wasn’t bad enough there are a great deal of other characters and bad guys who also want to take the Grimoire for their own bad reasons.
I actually really enjoyed this book. You always take a risk when you get a freebie, but the idea of this was good and I liked how the characters grew. Yes, some of the way the plot was moved along was a little bit cliche, and a few things seemed a bit slow. Overall though the book was still a fun, short read. The only reason that I am not giving this a 5 gem review, is because the editing was really really bad. I am not perfect by any means when it comes to writing reviews, but ouch. I also know not everyone can afford a professional editor (as a freelance writer, I get it really) but at the very least I feel everyone should have a couple of friends who like to read to use as Beta readers. Even something as simple as that will enable you to catch some glaring issues and make the experience of reading better once you publish. Terrible editing aside, the book was fun and good enough to get me interested in reading the next part of the series.

 

My Gemstone Rating: