I found this to be a slow start but only for a short time when the story totally engrossed me.
A great start to a series.

"I'm not scared. And because I'm not scared, I'm worried. I'm not a brave person. This monster should be terrifying me out of my mind, but instead, I'm overcome with relief."

Agatha is a 13 year old who comes from a very unloving home where she lives with her Aunt and Uncle. This all changes when Jonah shows up in her life and things start to go absolutely crazy. Not only does she find out who she really is, she also finds out that she is far more important then she ever thought she would be.

"Finding out about one's heritage should be finding out your great uncle was a drinker or fought in a war. Not that there are two worlds and monsters are real."

Jonah while slightly terrifying to picture at times, is also the new fatherly figure in Agatha's life as he helps her navigate through a whole new world she never even knew existed.
A world that at times was rather difficult to understand because of how amazing the creatures seem to be and how exactly all of the new worlds work in contrast to the "real world" that she's always known. (I feel like we will get a better understanding as the series goes on.)

Then we have Dathid who is probably my favorite fairy that I've read about so far. Not only is he protective of Agatha in a brotherly way he is also one that seems to have a lot of secrets and I can't wait to get to know him more as the series goes on.

"Good, we contain a little Hope and a tiny bit of Trust, some Curiosity and a lot of Doubt and Fear."

While we have a whole other slew of characters that are vary important to the story as well, I can't really talk about them because I feel like it will take away from the experience. I will say this though, while this book is fantasy it's full of a 13 year old girl who is very realistic and it was so refreshing to see a main character who doesn't have a lot of skills and is scared of things, yet tries to put on a brave face to do what she has to.

The ending of this book left me wanting to know what happens next and I can't wait to read the next one.

DNF@20%

Let’s get one thing straight. If you say this book has the Grim Reaper in it, it better be the Grim Reaper, not some shadowy guy dressed in a black robe, or I’m going to be massively disappointed.

Which is what happened, although this isn’t the reason why I stopped reading. I can live with a bit of disappointment here and there, but I can’t cope with a whiny, uninteresting protagonist in a first person POV.

I think I was reading a different book to everyone else, because the praise for this seems to be effusive, but I couldn’t get into it. Guess this one just wasn’t for me.

An original take on the traditional Elf/Fairy/Supernatural-animal setting with an interesting female protagonist.. I know it's a YA book, but the teen heroine's dwelling on her inadequacies, while probably resonating well with the target audience, irked me a little. Despite that, she starts coming into her own in the latter half of the book, so I started rooting for her! Atkins paints excellent word pictures in order to realise the different landscapes an societies of her world. I'll be interested to see how the plot strands and characters develop in the sequels. Very promising.

You can walk on the ocean, interact with Pegasus, Unicorns, Faeries, and Elves, or have Disney like adventures. Candy Atkins provides everything in this book except thankfully another yet overused romance plot. It’s about time a YA author managed to write a beautifully enchanting adventure without requiring her female character to meet, fall in love and need a man.

Even though this is a fantasy, Atkins manages to write so realistically you almost believe this world and these people she has created can exist. In here we get a female character females can actually be glad to spend their time with instead of an embarrassing stereotype.

Her character development manages to bring to life some genuine characters you want to root for particularly as her main character tries to get a handle on her life while going through that oh so fun time when you’re no longer a kid but not quite an adult. Atkins managed to capture teen angst at its best.

She takes you on an incredible journey through descriptive settings and attention holding plot lines into a brand new world that teenagers and adults can love. The only thing better is that this is the first in a new series so the greatness will continue.