Audiobook Review – The Faerie Guardian (Creepy Hollow, Book 1) by Rachel Morgan (3.5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 8 hours and 10 minutes (324 pages)
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Release Date: March 17, 2015
ASIN: B00U6P3RGS
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Creepy Hollow series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
“Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until a cute human boy who can somehow see through her faerie glamor follows her into the Fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.
The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the Fae realm. Easy, right? Not when you factor in evil faeries, long-lost family members, and inconvenient feelings of the romantic kind. Vi is about to find herself tangled up in a dangerous plot—and it’ll take all her training to get out alive.”
I got this book to read on audiobook. The audiobook was decently done but not wonderful. The main heroine has a very chirpy voice which doesn’t match her character all that well. Additionally a lot of the male voices sounded similar (particularly Nate and Ryn).
I really didn’t like the beginning of this book. The story was just too simple and too silly; the beginning is all about Nate following Vi into faerie and getting her into trouble and the chaos that follows when she tries to get him back home. I thought Nate was incredibly unlikable; he came across as selfish and chauvinistic and I truly did not understand what a strong girl like Vi saw in him. I almost stopped listening to this a couple hours in because I just could not stand Nate.
The book got a lot better in the second half when Vi starts to unravel the mystery around Nate’s mom and the strange eye tattoo Nate ends up with. Here we get introduced to a lot more of the politics in Faerie and the story gets tons more interesting. Also Nate gets a lot less page space and Ryn gets a lot more (I loved Ryn).
I absolutely loved Ryn’s character and really loved the dynamic him and Vi had going on. Ryn comes off as a jerk early on, but as you learn the complicated history between him and Vi things get more and more interesting.
In the second half of the book there is a also a lot more discussion about powerful magic items and a plot to collect them and this was very engaging.
The action scenes are well done and I enjoyed most of the characters (except for Nate). In the end this ended up being a decent book despite the rough start.
Overall an okay read that has a lot of fae magic, romance, and action. I would recommend to those who enjoy paranormal YA reads. The book started rough but got better towards the end. I am unsure if I will continue with the series or not; I’ll have to think about it a bit.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
– Audiobook Reading Challenge
