Throw Back Thursday: the Modern Faerie Tale series by Holly Black

It's my first Throw Back Thursday!

Today we're going back to 2004 with the release of the first book in the Modern Faerie Tale series, Tithe by the amazingly talented, amazingly awesome Holly Black!


Synopsis (from Goodreads):

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.

Favourite character: Kaye
Favourite line: "Kiss my ass, Rath Roiben Rye."
Overall Rating: 4.5 stars









Synopsis (from Goodreads):


When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.

But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends.
And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.

Favourite character: Luis...Val...NO LUIS!....Val?...I can't decide :(
Favourite line: “You carried my heart in your hands tonight," he said. "But I have felt as if you carried it long before that.”
Overall rating: 3.5 stars



Synopsis (from Goodreads):

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.

Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?

Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

Favourite character: Loved Kaye in this book, but I loved Luis and Corny the most.
Favourite line: "Maybe it's good we split up. I mean, as far as boyfriends go, he was always working. Running an evil court takes a lot of time."
Overall rating: 4 stars

Holly Black is literally the reason why I started reading more and why I started writing. Once I finished the Spiderwick Chronicles in the fourth grade, I started looking for more books that could ever live up to the series. When I learned that Holly herself had her own series apart from Spiderwick, young me had my first fangirl moment.

Being nine-ish/ten-ish at the time, I had a hard time getting used to the vocabulary and older writing style; I didn't know that I was reading Young Adult at the time.

However, if I didn't read Tithe, I probably wouldn't have gotten into  the YA paranormal/fantasy books that I so adore till this day!

So thank you Holly Black! And if you haven't read these books yet, go out and buy them now! You'll fall in love and find yourself so emersed in the world!

Happy Thursday guys!