Wings by Aprilynne Pike

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Genre: Fantasy/Contemporary

Release Date: 5/5/2009

About the Book: Laurel has always been homeschooled and sheltered, but now her family has moved and she's the new girl at school. She befriends David and Laurel starts adjusting to her new life until the day she finds a flower blooming on her back. Laurel is about to discover that she has more of a connection to the fairy world than she ever thought and those fantasy creatures she's never believed in may just be part of her world.

GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: Another teen fantasy love triangle-haven't we had enough already? But yet Aprilynne Pike makes me care even though I hate love triangle's (someone is always going to get hurt...well, unless you have a creepy baby to grow up and become your best friends soul mate.)

Yes, this is like Twilight in a lot of ways and I hate when books are compared to Twilight. But I couldn't help it with this one, especially with the Stephenie Meyer blurb on the front and the nod to Stephenie on the acknowledgements page. Laurel is the new girl in town, a boy immediately likes her (David kind of reminded me of Mike Newton at times), they meet in biology class, Laurel is shy but drawn to the boy, one of them is not normal and there's going to be another guy added to the mix. This one will for sure appeal to Twilight fans. That's not a bad thing though, and I think Wings could easily become the next must have fantasy series.

Aprilynne Pike creates a faery world that's all her own-it's unique, it's engaging and I liked the mythology she came up with. Tamani (love interest number two) grew on me throughout, but I still find it annoying how one guy is a sensible (maybe boring?) guy, and another is dark and mysterious. (and possibly brooding?) Sigh...all this love triangle stuff wears me out-and for the record, I am totally on Team David from the start!

The biggest problem I had with Wings was that I thought it read sort of like a middle grade fantasy when I was expecting more. Maybe this is my fault for not really knowing what to expect, but I did think that some of the action sequences were a little cartoon-ish. Plus, it did take awhile for action to happen, so if you have a reader that doesn't care too much on background story, they might not stick with it. I also thought Laurel was a little dumb-I had things figured out a lot sooner than she did-sometimes she didn't make me believe she was really fifteen. That being said, I would have no problem giving this one to middle school readers (or maybe younger), so it's a good Twilight read-alike for some of the younger Twilight fans.

I'm interested to see where the story goes, and I like the world that's been created, I just hate having to wait for sequels and getting pulled through the "who will she choose" thing for the rest of the series. Despite my complaints, I really enjoyed Wings and even though it was a fast, simplistic read, it was lots of fun. I would suggest it as a great light fantasy read for all ages.