Fairest

Comfort reread.

I like pretty much all of Levine's work, but she doesn't skip the rough bits. This might not be a book to read if you're currently dealing with body image stuff. Like, the ending message of “you're beautiful how you are!” is great, but uh. There's a lot of internal monologue of self hatred before we get to that bit. I would love to have learned more about Aza's specific history and how she came to be a foundling, though, I think that would be fascinating.

My daughter got this out of the library and decided on this as the latest read-aloud bedtime story book. It's a fantasy about a girl in a kingdom that prizes singing ability. And it's sortuva preteen romance-y type thing and really geared towards younger girls. So... it was okay for my daughter but OMG this did nothing for me. I thought it pretty clunky and slow and just, well, dull. Maybe it's okay for you, though.

This book was really fun. I listened to the audio book and had never experienced a layout like this one: each character was played by a different actor. I really enjoyed not having to guess who was speaking all the time! Also, music plays a vital role in this book, and they actually wrote music to go along with the lyrics written in the book.

Perfect for me when I was taking an intro to art and drawing class (took my mind off the art enough to not over-concentrate, and distracted me so I could spend a good deal of time working on it).

The main character is a foundling who is not very pleasing to look at, but she has the most beautiful singing voice - a treasured trait in her country. Through several peoples' good and bad intentions, she is thrown into the royal court and turned into a scape goat. She must do all she can to clear her name, but being the very caring and insightful person she is, she knows that those responsible for her shame are not fully responsible for their actions. How to achieve justice and mercy at once? It's quite a quandary, and makes for great reading!

I should really not read when I am in a bad mood. Sometimes reading takes me out of the bad mood and others it settles its bad self into the book and ruins it for me. That happened with two books this past weekend. This book was destined to be disliked. I was in a terrible mood when I picked it up hoping beyond hope that I could be whisked away into another world instead I just got angry and then angrier. Ok, ok so the kid got hit with the ugly stick. Too tall, too wide, too many freckles, blah, blah, blah. I get that she wasn't pretty but that she was horribly maimed that people did not want to have her serve them. But really, she WASN'T that hideous - she felt that hideous and I can accept that – but making it seem like the entire world stopped and said, ‘wow this chick is ugly' just seemed a bit like overkill. So I finally got past the she is the ugliest creature on the planet and then the prince falls instantaneously in love with her. Um, what? I thought she was the most hideously ugly creature on the planet. So he fell in love with her voice, he is such a saint that he saw past what everyone else failed to look past. I don't know. Everything fell into place just a little too smoothly; it felt like a block puzzle for toddlers. I don't know – again I blame my bad mood because I have several friends who loved this book, people who I generally agree with on literature so I am chalking it up to my bad mood. I am going to put this book away for a while tucked quietly on my shelf to be read again in the future, most definitely on a day when I am not in a bad mood.

(2008) My library had a copy of this book, so I started to read it. But it just made me wish I had a young girl to share the story with, so I stopped. I'll read it again one day, it seems to hold a good lesson. I'm just too distracted to read it right now.