This one was very “teenage drama” with a lot of ideas that don’t always pan out. The premise is interesting enough but it does not deliver on the ideas presented in a thorough or well thought out way.

Kaye has lived a hard life and has not ever had a stable living situation. Her mother is trying to make a living as a singer but can’t find success, so she brings Kaye back to her grandmother’s so they can live withe her for a while to get back on their feet.

After moving back in, Kaye’s old “imaginary” friends find her again. They’re Faeries and they need her help. Helping them consists of her pretending to be human (which we find out pretty early she’s only half) to be sacrificed at a specific time to bind the fae under one ruler. This is a convoluted idea for a plot and results in some really strange scenarios for this 16 year-old girl to be in.

Kaye ends up falling for a knight named Roiben relatively quickly and they have their ups and downs relationship wise. Roiben is bound to the Seelie queen and because she knows his name, she has absolute power over him. Kaye also ascertains his name and uses it to command him to slaughter the Seelie queen and her subjects before she can be sacrificed, but it is confusing as to why the Seelie queen does not tell him to stop if she knows his name. The author writes that the chaos is so loud that he cannot hear her command… This does not make sense. Also, in an enclosed room if someone shouts the name of another and commands them to kill others, everyone would hear that… Why would no one else try to command Roiben to stop killing? It doesn’t make sense.

Kay also has manipulative powers for some reason and only uses them to torment Janet’s boyfriend that she had the hots for. She does some questionable things with this power, but only to this guy. These actions paint her as a terrible person and it only gets worse.

Corny is the older brother of Kaye’s “best friend” Janet and gets caught up in Kaye’s plans, much to my dismay. He drives her to where the Fae are meeting, sneaks in and gets drunk. Kaye sees him and tries to snap him out of it, but guess what she does when that doesn’t work? She leaves him there! Because of her actions, he becomes a sex slave to a fae knight with a torture kink. The things that happen to Corny are off-script but the allusion to them is enough to make me uncomfortable. He is essentially brainwashed and raped and it is just glossed over. This really left a negative connotation for the entire book in my brain. I can’t fathom how this was in a YA novel back in 2002. Truly a different time.

Janet, her “best friend”, means nothing to the story. She dies and Kaye is sad for ten minutes, then she sleeps with Roiben the same night.

The plot of the book is a mess, because of the “tithe” being tied to the control of Fae society, the ramifications of Kaye’s actions are worldwide panic. Random disasters are occurring and it’s all because the Fae do not have a pact to follow. It sets up for more story, but I will not be reading any further entries because the subject matter and overall writing of this fiction was intolerable for me. Overall it was melodramatic with surface level characters and setting. With enough development it could be interesting, but this was not a good introduction to the narrative.