Forever (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale 5) by Chanda Hahn

With the Godmother Guild destroyed by Teague's army, Mina finds herself without the guidance of her Fae Godmother. Alone and confused, she must lean on her friends for support. The dark prince threatens their very existence with a show of power on the human plane that has everyone running for their lives. 

To save them, Mina must make a deal with the prince to become his prisoner or lose her friends forever. But is there any hope for Jared and the love they briefly shared, or must beauty destroy the beast she created?

And here we come to the conclusion of the Unfortunate Fairy Tale series.  It’s only five books, which certainly seems short compared to other series, but it seems like it’s been such a long ride.  Like I said in my review of the last book, I really feel like Chanda Hahn has improved through the course of this series.

This time we follow Mina as she attempts to fix things after she found out that she, in fact, is the one who started the entire curse in the first place by going back in time.  Because of the desperate situation, I feel like there’s a lot more action packed into this book, though there’s plenty of breathing room as well, such as when things are starting to really go well at the castle between Mina and Teague.  I actually recall feeling like Hahn was going to have the entire thing be following Beauty and the Beast, since it was pretty close to it with Mina being willingly held captive in place of her loved ones, and them slowly warming up to each other as Mina got to know him and help around the castle, and I was just a little disappointed that it didn’t.

However, I do feel like this book really shined in the way it handled Mina’s siren lineage and her family and their crewmates.  It actually made me really wish that we had found out a lot sooner that her mother was a siren and they were around to help, because I feel like it would really have benefited the earlier books, which I frankly found a bit mediocre and annoying.

All in all, I’d say that while it is a bit corny at times, especially in the end (though it was obviously trying to go for Happily Ever After so I can give it a little credit there) this was a pretty good ending to the series, and I just might look into Hahn’s other books, or keep an eye out for any new ones she puts out in the future.

Reign (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale book 4) by Chanda Hahn

Going to the Fae plane against Jared’s orders has cost Mina dearly. Her decision continues to haunt her as a new danger surfaces. The Grimms are fading. 

To save her family’s future, Mina Grime will have to travel to the past with the help of her Fae Godmother and a magic pair of shoes. 

She must go to where the Story first began, to the beginning of the dark prince’s reign. But can she finish her quest before her time runs out or will she be trapped in the past forever? 

Reign is the fourth book in the Unfortunate Fairy Tale series, following Mina Grimm as she attempts to work through the fairy tales that have been thrown at her family as part of a curse ever since the famous Brothers Grimm first encountered the Fae years ago.  If you’ve been reading my blog for a while or looked at the archives, you’ll see that I’ve read and reviewed the previous three and will know that I felt like they’ve improved as they went, because I really wasn’t a fan of the first one.

This time around, I’d say there’s not a whole lot of improvement from the third book, but that’s not entirely a bad thing since I did enjoy it.  This time Mina’s trying to deal with the fact that Jared has been recombined with Teague and that the Cinderella fairy tale is chasing after her as she goes to a ball with her on again, off again love interest Brody.  There’s also time travel this time, as the Godmother Guild finds out that certain members of her family are simply disappearing.

I will be the first to say that I think Chanda Hahn is extremely creative.  I love her ideas and twists on the tails so that she can make them work in a modern setting, and as this series continues, she really seems to be getting her footing.  However I would have to have a little complaint about what we find out is the cause of the disappearance, namely that William Grimm had fallen ill and until Mina showed up, might not have made it through the night.  We have a huge build-up, expecting it to be something Teague was doing, and it just seems like a bit of a letdown, especially since it’s connected with the huge journey she makes that’s related to the tales, and it just seems like something that the GMs should’ve known about or seen coming so that they could deal with it better and more easily.

I’d also have to say that the editing in this is sometimes shoddy.  I’m of the frame of mind that self-publishing isn’t an excuse for lower readability, and the fact that I found a lot of missing words and tense switching, among other things, brought down my impression of it despite the vast improvements in both characterization and writing.

Despite this, if you don’t mind a series that takes a couple books to really get off the ground in terms of quality, I’d say that this is worth a read.

Book review: Fable (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #3) by Chanda Hahn

All that glitters is not gold.

When something precious is stolen from sixteen-year-old Mina Grime, she will do anything in her power to get it back, even if it means traveling to the dangerous Fae plane and battling one of the strongest fairy-tale villains yet.

However, nothing can prepare Mina for the dangerous obstacles she will face in the Fae world, or the choices she must make when love and life are on the line.

And here we have the third book in the Unfortunate Fairy Tale series.  I read reviews for it after I finished it, mostly because I was curious what people would say, but didn’t want it ruined for me (I do this for a lot of books I’ve just finished reading, actually).  Anyway, it seems that a lot of people didn’t like this entry in the series.  But you know what I also noticed?  People who didn’t like this one liked the previous books.  And as you’ll know if you’ve read my previous reviews for the books, they aren’t that great, as far as I’m concerned.

This time the action really gets started.  Mina experiences a tragedy very early in the book in the form of a fire in the building she lives in, which everyone believes claimed her younger brother.  Pretty early on she finds out that he’s in fact been kidnapped, orchestrating another tale after she was avoiding them on purpose all summer.  The book isn’t perfect, I don’t think, but it definitely shows leaps and bounds of improvement for Hahn and her writing.  I actually enjoyed a good majority of it, especially near the end when everything starts being revealed and the stakes for the final book are set.  It’s different from the last two books, and that’s probably why reviewers who enjoyed the first two don’t like it, but I personally think it’s much, much better.

I just wish that Hahn had started off this strong.  When the final book comes out I’ll probably be looking for it, though.  So, happy reading!

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.

Book review: UnEnchanted (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #1) by Chanda Hahn

Mina Grime is unlucky, unpopular and uncoordinated, that is until she saves her crush's life on a field trip, changing her High School status from loser to hero overnight. But with her newfound fame brings misfortune as an old family curse come to light. For Mina is descended from the Brothers Grimm and has inherited all of their unfinished fairy tale business. Which includes trying to outwit a powerful Story from making her its next fairytale victim.

To break the fairy tale curse on her family and stop these deadly events, Mina must finish the tales until the very Grimm end.

Like a lot of people, I downloaded this book because it’s free on Amazon.  Can’t go wrong with free, right?  Despite that it’s one of the most popular free downloads on the site in its categories, though it’s… not that great.  I’d say it’s a little below average at best.

There are definitely good parts about this, but not a lot.  Plenty of the scenes I liked the concept of, for example, and the plot itself is one that could’ve been great.  But the writing and execution is… meh.  Even if a book is self-published it should be polished as much as possible, and it's obvious in some places that it wasn’t.  For instance, one minute Jared is just this mysterious guy who seems to be helping Mina out for unknown reasons, and the next Mina suddenly knows he’s a fae, with no explanation of her thought process.  However, this is kind of made worse by the fact that the fae are never explained.  I felt like I was missing something when they were suddenly thrust in there without even a short infodump explanation of something Mina’s mother said like Hahn did every other time.

There’s also the fact that Mina just readily accepts what her mother tells her, and even says it “explains” some things.  Like, what?  The moving around, sure, but her mother consciously put her daughter down and made her feel like an outsider because she thought it would make it harder for the Grimm Curse to find them.  I can’t really say I can sympathize with her, especially since it didn’t work.

All-in-all, this is one of those books that could’ve been great, and does have some spots where it is, but it’s just not there.  The other two books in the series aren’t free and I can’t say I’m willing to pay four dollars for more of the same.  Maybe I’ll keep an eye out for them being made free, though.