Extraordinary

August 30, 2010
Phoebe Rothschild is a descendant of Mayer Rothschild, the 18th-century founder of a banking dynasty. In seventh grade, she befriends Mallory, and the two become close as sisters. But Mallory has a secret: she is a faerie, and her mission is to sabotage Phoebe’s self-worth. Mallory is unable to get the job done, so years later her handsome brother, Ryland, arrives and uses glamour to get Phoebe to fall for him. The plot rests, shakily, on backstory about a bargain Mayer Rothschild struck with the faerie queen two centuries earlier: she would give him five extraordinary sons in exchange for one ordinary female heir to be sacrificed to the faerie kingdom. The passages in which Ryland verbally attacks the stout, plain Phoebe are painful reading: “There’s just something really wrong with you,” Ryland tells her. “Phoebe had been absolutely naked when he’d said this.” Though Werlin (Impossible) raises interesting questions about honesty, love, and what it truly means to be “extraordinary,” those topics get lost amid the slow pace and dialogue that sacrifices realism for emotional heft. Ages 12–up.