Book review: Fairest (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #2) by Chanda Hahn

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall,

Who is the Fairest of them all?

In the sequel to UnEnchanted, Mina Grime discovers that all is not fair when it comes to the Fae and their tales, especially when they don’t all play by the rules. Barely surviving the Story’s first fairy tale quest, Mina still has hundreds to go before she can end the curse on her family. But a new player arises to challenge Mina while new rules revamp the game she has just barely begun to understand.

All the while, people are mysteriously disappearing, including Jared, whom Mina must finally determine to be friend or foe. And with the loss of her greatest weapon, Mina must try to outwit a deadly hunter. Can Mina survive the most difficult quest yet while protecting those she loves from falling victim to one of the lethal tales of all? Or will she become a pawn when she strikes a bargain with the Queen of Fae?

Fairest is the second book in the Unfortunate Fairytale series, and if you’ve read my review of the first book, you could see that I wasn’t all that impressed.  The first book is one of the top free books on Amazon, hence why I saw it in the first place, and I kind of felt like that was the only reason people got it: it was free.  But I couldn’t help but want to see where things went from there, so I have the other two books that are out.

This one is slightly better.  In terms of the story, anyway.  Things connect better, there’s foreshadowing that makes it feel more like things happen for a reason than they’re just thrown around as plot devices, and it’s just all around better.  Mina’s still annoying, but the fact that she’s cast as the villain in the major tales in this book shows Hahn’s giving it a try to make it interesting rather than everything just going well for Mina.

Unfortunately the story being better doesn’t excuse the fact that it still is a chore to read.  The writing itself is simple and I felt like no one had bothered to go through and edit it on even the most basic level.  Seriously, it was a chore to read at times because of all the mistakes.  It might not be so bad for someone who isn’t as picky, but, well, I’m a writer and so it is for me.  Because of this, it gets a pretty low rating.  Not only because the editing is bad, but because the mistakes are so simple and basic (dialog formatting, anyone?) that I find it lazy that she left them in for the final version.

So yeah still not a great book but I’ll be trudging through the third soon on principle.  Happy reading if you choose to check them out yourself.