Wondrous Strange

Seventeen year old Kelley has moved to New York to become an actress and is the understudy to Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When the actress suffers an injury, Kelley gets the lead in the off-off Broadway play not knowing that her history has very much to do with the play.

Sonny is a changeling who is a member of the Janus guard sent to protect the gate between the mortal world and the faerie realm. After a chance meeting with the beautiful Kelley, he feels compelled to protect. Someone is out for Kelley and neither she nor Sonny knows why. But they are coming for her as Halloween approaches and the gate opens wider.

I’ve read a lot of urban fantasy books especially of the girl finds about faerie heritage types (see also Tithe by Holly Black, Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr to name a few) so I started this book hoping it would not follow the plots of these other books. Surprisingly, it had more in common with Magic Street by Orson Scott Card. There were some funny elements to the book especially the kelpie in the bathtub. It was interesting to see how Lesley Livingston wove the tale of A Midsummer Night’s Dream into the plot of the book but twisted the play into something modern age. The faeries, for the most part, were fearsome creatures and the faerie nobility was sneaky and wiley and complex. The only king who meet is Auberon, the Winter King and the only queen is Mab, the fearsome Autumn Queen but the others are mentioned and I betting that there will be more in the eventual sequel