Oh, James. James, James, James...I love thee.

I loved Lament, so Ballad is beyond disappointing in how terrible it was. I thought Lament was poetic and beautiful, this book contains transcripts of text messages. Yes, that's right. So if you enjoyed the first book for it's literary quality, throw all of that out of the window for this book. It's completely different, and thoroughly terrible to me.

I think I liked this more than the first one because James was the main character this time and he is funny. Quite a potty mouth, but still funny. No "f" words this time but about everything else. Quite romantic. Stressful decisions had to be made.

More adventures of Dee and James-this time from James' point of view.


Summary: When music prodigy James Morgan and his best friend, Deirdre, join a private conservatory for musicians, his talent attracts Nuala, a faerie muse who fosters and feeds on creative energies, but soon he finds himself battling the Queen of the Fey for the very lives of Deirdre and Nuala.

this book was better than the first one in the series. james made a much more compelling narrator than deirdre. the plot made more sense in this one also, though the romance was still on the too-rapid-to-be-believable side. i enjoyed the secondary characters in this book more than in book one as well.

Way to make my really dislike Dee when I loved her in the first book.

But James was fabulous in this, and I loved Nuala. the story had great pacing, the end didn't feel rushed this time. Great story.

Beautiful! A world I want to live in this book! Just another reason why Maggie is my literary hero!

I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as the first book. I felt less secure with James as narrator, and was often confused as to what was going on.

I so love James! I will be honest I was hoping for a little information on what was going on with Luke and Dee but I quickly got over it and fell for James :). Totally has my humor and now I want to know more about him ... see more of what happens to him and Nuala. Luke and Dee totally fell off my radar.

I should say that I basically bought this book because a few of this author's books show up now and then in "If you like this book, try this one" types of lists for me but I'd been on the fence about actually buying any of them and hey this went way cheap during a kindle sale so well, a safe time to try her stuff out. I realized it wasn't the first book in a series of two (I think - can two really = a series?), but still, why not? It sounded as though I could read it alone and get a good enough feel for what was happened and yes, a feel for the author.

That is indeed what I got here. A book that, okay it would have helped to read the first one - probably. Truth be told this is one of the few books that is part of a series (duo?) that doesn't recap the prior book in such obnoxious detail that you wonder why you read the prior one - but I did still get a good enough feel for what had happened that I wasn't lost.

I'm sure if you read any other review or synopsis of this book you don't need me telling you what it is but the short version = yes there are Faeries and humans that can see them. One in particular would like to get ahold of James as she needs to "feed" off of his life / talent to survive. He's not really into that idea, but is very much into his best friend who has a serious issue with the faeries. It's pretty much what you would expect of a teen supernatural story.

Is this the greatest book ever, of course not. Will I go back and read Lament? Not even sure about that. Maybe. But, I was left with a positive enough impression of the author that I'll probably read more of her books anyway as I could read this quickly, enjoy it enough, not regret having spent a day or two finishing it up, etc.