"Tithe" by Holly Black

Tithe is a book I chose to read based on a online recommendation from people who enjoyed similar books to me. Based on the recommendation I was full of anticipation going into the book, however I feel that may be the reason that I feel a little let down by the book.

I found the book in the beginning a bit of a chore to read, I'm not sure if this was because of the use of fairy 'jargon' which was a little overwhelming to someone new to this genre and a little distracting from the story line, or because the story was a little slow to get into.

I really enjoyed the budding romance between Kaye and Roiben, I especially found the mentions of Roiben in the book a reason to keep reading. He was mean but yet something about him made you want to know more, and then you realise that maybe he isn't that nasty after all!

The relationship with Kaye and Janet (her best friend) reminded me of so many teenage BFF friendships! Which made it difficult for me to understand the point of her death later in the book. It seemed to be a pointless gesture which maybe could have been explored it a more enlightened way. That aspect of the story just wasn't developed enough for me. It did help to show the balance between the fairy-world and the mortal-world but I believe there were many more, much more creative ways that could've been done.

There were aspects of the story line that were very predictable. For example towards the end of the book Roiben gives Kaye a riddle which could save her life, you know what the answer is straight away due to the strength put on the answer earlier in the book, but yet it feels like a train wreck about to happen as you watch Kaye searching for the answer. 

So the moral of the story, don't let anticipation get the best of you, if I'd be less judgemental about how good the book was going to be before reading it I probably would've enjoyed it a lot more! To be fair I have since read the sequel, so it mustn't have been too bad if I went back for more! 

I did after reading the second book feel there were a number of sequence of events in the relationship with this book that parallel the story line in the Twilight series, through no fault of the author given that this book was published much earlier than Twilight. I guess Stephenie Meyer wasn't that creative with her story line as it seems to be used in a number of Supernatural romance novels.

Look forward to hearing your opinions on the book too!!