I Hate Fairyland: Madly Ever After - Skottie Young

Title: I Hate Fairyland: Madly Ever After
Author: Skottie Young
Genre: graphic novel
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 128
Date read: May, 2016

Follow Gert, a forty year old woman stuck in a six year olds body who has been stuck in the magical world of Fairyland for nearly thirty years. Join her and her giant battle-axe on a delightfully blood soaked journey to see who will survive the girl who HATES FAIRYLAND.


This was... extraordinarily weird! Not necessarily bad-weird, but totally unexpected. I read most of it with my eyebrows up and my jaw down, wondering how on earth I had entered this surreal universe.

The drawings were great - although perhaps slightly too detailed at times, which could get slightly gross. The plot pretty unique, and the main character unusually unpleasant. This is definitely not a comic I'd hand to a girl who likes princesses - but very possibly to a boy who likes the unconventional.

Really not what I had expected, and as such, I have a bit of a hard time figuring out what I think of it, but at the end of the day - I think I like it.

The Fun Family - Benjamin Frisch

Title: The Fun Family
Author: Benjamin Frisch
Genre: Graphic Novel
Rating: 1/5
# pages: 240
Date read: May, 2016

Beloved cartoonist Robert Fun has earned a devoted following for his circle-shaped newspaper comic strip, celebrating the wholesome American family by drawing inspiration from his real home life... but the Fun Family bears some dark secrets. As their idyllic world collapses and the kids are forced to pick up the pieces, can they escape the cycle of art imitating life imitating art?


I received this book as an ARC in return for an honest review.

Let's get the good stuff out of the way first - I liked the style of the drawings in this, even if it did get difficult to tell Mike and Robby apart at times, and the mother's face had a weird shape.

There. That was it.

There was literally nothing I enjoyed about this comic. I kept reading it, under the assumption that it just HAD to get better eventually... but it never did. Instead it ended on an extreme low, that just made me push the book away in disgust.

Full disclosure - I don't know Benjamin Frisch, and have no clue if the Fun family is based on a newspaper comic strip of some kind. If that's the case, I can see Benjamin Frisch getting so tired of his own story, that he felt the need to write a book about their life going to hell in a hand basket, in order to get some sort of therapeutic release. That would make sense, and that would make the book make sense. It wouldn't make it any more enjoyable, but at least I'd understand what he was trying to do.

Instead what I got was a book full of dysfunctional adults and only marginally less dysfunctional kids. Until the very end, I'd sort of expected that the grandmother's ghost would help the family get back on their feet again, but instead she just introduced a whole new level of weirdness into their lives.

The parents were the worst though. They kept making bad decision after bad decision, leaving the kids to bear the brunt of it and pick up the pieces. I wanted to kick some sense into both the mother and father, for them to wake up and take responsibility already!

A deeply unpleasant book that I wouldn't recommend to anybody.

Seeds of Discovery - Breeana Puttroff

Title: Seeds of Discovery
Author: Breeana Puttroff
Genre: YA, fantasy
Rating: 4/5
# pages: Audiobook ~7hrs
Date read: May, 2016

Quinn Robbins' life was everything she thought a teenager's should be. She has good friends, a family that she loves, good grades, and an after-school job she enjoys. And, she's just been asked out by Zander Cunningham, a popular football player and great guy. But one day when driving home after picking up her little sister from the baby-sitter's, she nearly hits a boy who, after running blindly into the street, mysteriously disappears.

The mystery only deepens as she figures out who the boy is; William Rose, a reclusive, awkward boy from school who always has his nose in a pile of books.

As she becomes more aware of his behavior it becomes more obvious how out of the ordinary William is and how hard he deliberately tries to blend into the background. This only intrigues her more and she finds herself working to find out more about him, and exactly where he keeps disappearing to.

On a whim one night she follows him and suddenly finds herself in a new world. One where William is a prince, literally, and she is treated like a princess. She also discovers that she is stuck; the gate back to her own world isn't always open.

Quinn finds herself smack in the middle of a modern-day fairy tale, on a course that will change her life forever.


A bit slow to start, but that may have been because I 'read' it as an audiobook rather than a physical book. Once it did take off I really enjoyed it. It's a different take on the normal YA fantasy, and I liked the mix.

I loved seeing Quinn's growing friendship with William and Thomas, and was pleased that at least in this book, no romantic tangles were included.

A charming book, and with enough of a plot of its own to not just feel like a "setting the scene" novel. It didn't make me feel like I have to rush out and read the next one immediately (mostly because I'm afraid Quinn will get into some annoying situations due to her secret - there were signs of this already in this book), but I may eventually. It was sweet.