Extraordinary
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Scarborough Fair Trilogy - Book 2
This is the story of two teenage girls. They are best friends, but they could not be more different. Phoebe is rich and from an important family. Mallory is poor; a nobody. Phoebe is ordinary in appearance; Mallory is stunning. Phoebe has loving parents; Mallory's single mother is mentally ill. Phoebe is kind and warm; Mallory is cynical and suspicious. Phoebe is open; Mallory lies about everything—except her love for her friend. That is real.
Also, Phoebe is human. Mallory, unbeknownst to her friend, is fey.
Mallory did not encounter Phoebe by accident. She was sent to her for a deadly purpose. She has dawdled, hesitating to act, but now time is running out, and the decision is being taken from her. When Mallory's handsome, sexy, amoral older brother, Ryland, suddenly appears, the smooth surface of their friendship explodes with all the hidden secrets, and the hidden truths, too.
Inspired by the song "For Good" from Wicked, Extraordinary tells a story about girls, friendship, vulnerability, betrayal, and the faerie realm. And also about love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
