Review--Tithe by Holly Black

Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms - a struggle that could very well mean her death.

Here it is folks, my FIRST re-read since 2009 or 2010! Can’t really remember exactly what year it was but I know when Borders closed their doors forever, my TBR pile truly began…there are still books from those weeks of sales that I still need to read. But that’s beside the point!

I had decided I wanted to re-read Tithe by Holly Black because I wanted to give Ironside a try, but knew it would be impossible to read it without total and epic confusion. This was also in part because when I had started it, I was expecting to meet Holly Black on Sunday, but I have since learned that she had to cancel and my world fell apart completely. That’s no way to start ANY day of the week!

I was surprised with how much I was able to remember with this one. I didn’t remember everything, but as I was reading, I was like, oh yes, I remember this part! Though I might have got some memories confused with one another. But it was quite fun to re-read it! I can’t wait to dive headfirst into Ironside after this review!

Kaye is the daughter of a wannabe rockstar and when an accident leads her and her mom to move back in with her grandmother, things couldn’t be better truly. Kaye has fond memories of her New Jersey childhood home. She had great friends and was just generally excited to see them again. Only, these friends, you see, are actually faeries!

Kaye was always able to see faeries as a child and still can somehow now as a teenager. It’s after a night out with friends when she’s going home that she runs into an injured faery. Though Roiben’s no ordinary faerie, he’s the Unseelie Queen’s right-hand man! It’s not long after that Kaye is reacquainted with the world of faeries as her old friends come back needing her help. They first warn her against, Roiben and then they ask for her help with a “pretend sacrifice” so that they free/unaligned faeries can retain their freedom status for another seven years. But things quickly fall out of hand.

Kaye has a certain connection with the faery world that stems back farther than her childhood memories and it’s about to totally invade the world she thought she knew. I have to say that I was once again enchanted and thrilled with the world Holly created. At times I might have gotten some of the names mixed up, we go from calling the Unseelie and Seelie Queen from titles to names and other people in the same manner and it kind of got a little overwhelming. It kind of effected the whole reveal at the end a little bit because I wasn’t quite sure how I should be reacting because I was a little like, wait, who did IT?! Lol. But that only lasted for a moment because things were more cleared up and I was more like ohhhh!

These are not your ordinary faeries either. If you haven’t read this series yet, I will tell you that Holly’s faeries are definitely the dangerous kind. Ones who delight in using humans to play their games and torturing them. They are very dark and vicious, even the Seelie type! This was my first ever exposure to faeries when I read it however many years ago that was! And I always remember enjoying it! Particularly the relationship between Roiben and Kaye.

It’s definitely a subtle romance buildup. After Kaye helps save Roiben’s life, they are thrust together unexpectedly. They will have hurdles to cross and learn to trust one another. But I like that they are able to overcome the obstacles thrown at them. There were only a few kisses between them as well, and they didn’t always feel truly genuine, but you could still tell that there was a little something between them with each one!

The ending was pretty exciting too! As I said, some of the reveals were a bit confusing because so many names being tossed out. There’s no cliffhanger despite this being a trilogy which I only learned of in recent years. Before blogging my way of finding out about new books was seeing them on the shelves and eventually typing the author’s name in a search on Amazon! I was pretty old school! Lol! But this one ends pretty perfectly so you wouldn’t even know about a sequel unless you were super savvy back then! I cannot wait to see what Kaye and Roiben’s next adventure will entail…for apparently the second book didn’t involve them at all, and since the store didn’t have that one as well, I am skipping over it for now!


Overall Rating 4/5 stars