Book Review: Magic Under Glass

TITLE: Magic Under Glass
Book 1 of apparently 2 planned
AUTHOR: Jaclyn Dolamore
PUBLISHED: 2010
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: fantasy, faeries
PREMISE: Nimera is whisked from her life as a trouser girl and taken to be a singer for a rich man named Hollin. However when she gets to Hollin's place she discovers secrets and a dangerous plot that will involve war with the faeries.
MY REVIEW: If some of you are wondering where you've heard about this book before, it is the one that was involved in that whitewashing controversy a few months ago. Basically what happened is the character has dark skin but for the original cover Bloombury used a white girl and people went up in arms and I don't blame them because whitewashing is wrong. Unfortunately because of that a rather good book got lost in the shuffle because people basically decided they weren't going to buy it or anything else Bloomsbury published (or I think that was the decision...not sure how it was resolved actually...people kind of just stopped talking about it). Now I did not buy this one, I borrowed it from the library and as you can see this cover is not whitewashed so please no yelling at me for going against any boycott that may be in existance.
Now actual story review. I enjoyed this book. Granted there were a few flaws as there always are with an author's first book. Characters could have been developed more, and I wish more time was spent making the romance believable because it seemed to come out of nothing more then a few conversations. But luckily for the most part this book is good. It was an interesting premise for a change, kind of a magical version of Jane Eyre if you will.
I also found the writing to be very decent, aside from lack of developement. I could easily picture stuff, there was suspense built, idea was unique, and despite the abrupt ending (which I'm sure leads into the sequel planned), it was a good book. I look forward to whatever else this author has planned for readers, and hope for her sake that her future books don't get caught up in controversy.
WHO SHOULD READ: Jane Eyre fans, fantasy fans
MY RATING: Four out of Five keys

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