Not Your Average Fairytale by Chantele Sedgwick

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Title: Not Your Average Fairytale
Author: Chantele Sedgwick
Series: Not Your Average... #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: July 30, 2012
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 187
Genres: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2020 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Quarantine Edition
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon
My rating:

Blurb:

Armed with wings and a blue wand, being a fairy godmother should be easy ... unless your name is Ash, and you're a dude.

Ash Summerland has it all–good looks, popularity, and the best grades at The Academy of Magical Beings. Ready to complete his last assignment in order to graduate, Ash is confident he will get the apprenticeship he wants. When he opens the letter from the Council, he is shocked to discover he has been assigned to apprentice Lady Shenelle, Keeper of Happy Endings. A.K.A. the head fairy godmother. Ash is forced to grant three wishes to a troubled human girl named Kendall, and ultimately give her a "happy ever after". But Kendall turns out to be more than he bargained for. Still grieving over her father's death, Kendall doesn't want anything to do with him. And worst of all, she doesn't believe in happy endings.

My Review:

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
4.5 stars — LOVED IT! It was different and refreshing…the characters developed feelings for each along the way instead of insta-love (which I don’t mind, but it’s nice to have a balance). And the paranormal world was well-built and interesting! I especially love that the ending wasn’t a cliffhanger, but a solid ending with just a teaser of what would come with later books in the series. So I get to have that happy sigh, even knowing that things aren’t over. 🙂

ON REREAD:
3 stars — *sigh*  It’s SUPER weird when you have a completely different experience from a first read.  It’s happened to me a few times already, and it just really hits home how much I’ve changed in the past few years.

I will note before I start that I don’t have the more recent edition (hence why I used the old cover).  So I can’t confidently say that all of my gripes still exist, but a book isn’t going to change that much.

The problem is I’ve really opened up my eyes on toxic masculinity, and gender roles, and the toxic things that surround that…and so reading this, I couldn’t help but cringe.  Ash is beyond insulted at being a fairy godmother, and spares no amount of disdain for being a guy in a traditionally female role.  And it just kept going and going.  I think I kept reading because I couldn’t remember if this was part of his growth, but it wasn’t really.  I mean, he’d kind of moved past that because of other things happening, but I don’t believe he changed his views or saw his attitude as wrong.

That was the biggest, for sure, but the characters also felt really flat and one-dimensional.  I didn’t get a really good feel of who either of our MCs were, and I just didn’t feel things as much as I should have.

The bad characters were also caricatures.  I’m more tolerant of that with Dax, with the whole magic and past and stuff…though he was genuinely evil, and I honestly didn’t get why Ash let him get away with the things he got away with.  Again, toxic masculinity, he’d rather fight him about it.  *rolls eyes*

And then there’s Cameron.  I was the most horrified with Cameron.  He didn’t escalate so Kendall couldn’t see it until later…that maybe I’d have understood.  No, he pulled the whole “don’t lead me on and then pull back” shit from their first “date”.  I was disgusted.  I mean, she pushed him away, and he got mad and said horrible things and I thought fine.  BUT THEN SHE WENT OUT WITH HIM AGAIN!!!  And he did it again, except worse!  And then she WENT TO OUT WITH HIM AGAIN!!!  He was physically and mentally abusive.  He was everything that makes me angry about rape culture.  I just.  No.

Now, saying all that, it wasn’t all bad.  Hence my 3 stars and not lower.  There was cute stuff, and some emotions.  It just wasn’t enough.

So yeah.  Look at that, another series I meant to finish only to find out I can’t even handle the reread.  *sigh*