Wondrous Strange / Lesley Livingston / 327 p.

Kelley is your average seventeen year old. Well, with the exception that she graduated high school early, dropped out of her theater program, and moved to NYC to try to make it as an actress...at the age of seventeen.  Oh, did I mention that she's not quite human? No? Well, I suppose I should have.

In Wondrous Strange, Kelley has just been promoted from backstage-lackey/understudy to the lead role of Queen Titania when the lead breaks her ankle.  In a moment, Kelley's world changes...little does she know it's about to get stranger.  Practicing her lines in Central Park one evening, she is approached by a handsome stranger, who gives her a beautiful flower and then vanishes before she can even say thank you. Meet Sonny Flannery, a changeling who is part of the Unseelie Court's Janus Guard, a group of thirteen slated to protect the mortal realm from faeries attempting to escape into their world.  Sonny knows that something is different about Kelley...something he can't quite figure out.  When Kelley attempts to rescue a drowning horse in Central Park and then is stunned to find it in her bathtub at home...well...I bet you can imagine that things only get crazier from there.

I really enjoyed Livingston's writing.  She introduced a compelling story and beautifully wove in elements of Shakespeare's Midsummer Nights Dream.  It was really beautiful.  This was such a compelling book--the kind the pulls you in and then knocks you out of your reverie only when you've finished.  Reading the last page was like being pulled out of another world.  Kelley is a strong female lead.  I enjoyed her a bit more than many of the other slightly clueless females who have dominated YA fantasy lately.  While she may have accepted the truth of her heritage a bit more easily than one would expect, I felt like she was willing to take the reigns of her own destiny and work with it.  The romantic story between Kelley and Sonny is beautiful, but I can't wait to read the other books in the story to watch it develop (hoefully!)

The Iron King / Julie Kagawa / 363 p.

In Julie Kagawa's debut novel, she introduces readers to a world where faeries are created through imagination and creative efforts of the "real" world.  Megan Chase, our main character, discovers on her 16th birthday that there is a whole other realm that exists when her brother is kidnapped and traded for a changeling.  Megan enters the world of faery politics should had never dreamed of, becoming the pawn of the courts and wanted by a power neither know exist.  

This book promised adventure, and I felt that it delivered on that promise.  Kagawa's knowledge of faery lore and etiquette clearly exceeds my own, but I felt that those familiar with such topics wouldn't be disappointed.  She pulls from the realms of well established characters, such as Queen Mab and Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck) and weaves the characters with a modern day coming of age story of a half-blood faery.  

I very much enjoyed the Megan's character.  She was a strong-willed female who persevered through many trials along the journey to save her brother.  Every once in awhile I would cringe when she would start making deals left and right with faeries, something the reader learns fairly early on is not always the best idea.  On the whole, I thought she was a strong, possibly slightly underdeveloped, character.  Kagawa also gives her readers the classic good guy vs. bad boy dilemma from the start, with Puck and Ash.  Puck is Megan's long-time best friend and servant of the king (her father), while Ash is the prince of the other court (technically her enemy).  You gets hints throughout of Puck's feelings for Megan and in the end, there are most definitely sparks flying between Megan and Ash.  Only time (and the rest of the series) will tell which "team" readers, and ultimately Megan, choose.