Starred Review ALA Booklist (Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2010)

Starred Review In this second installment of a series that started with the best-selling Wings (2009), Laurel, who recently discovered she is a faerie, finds herself completely immersed in her new world when she begins studies at the Academy at Avalon. There she can spend more time with Tam, the faerie who is hopelessly in love with her, and also learn about the benefits and burdens her heritage entails. But the action really begins when she returns home. The trolls that stalked her in the previous book are more dangerous than ever, and this time Laurel is not the only one being targeted. Pike astutely mixes these breathtaking events with the real meat of the story: the angst and uncertainty Laurel feels as she tries to combine d sometimes keep separate r two lives. At the heart of that conundrum is the affection she feels for both her earthly love, David, and the deliciously different Tam. Mixing a little bit of Harry Potter and a lot of Twilight (Team David! Team Tam!), Pike has hit on a winning combination. Yet it is her own graceful take on life inside Avalon that adds a shimmering patina sure to enthrall readers. This book leaves them wanting more.

Kirkus Reviews

In clean, fresh prose, never wilting in momentum as some middle volumes do, this second installment stays fragrant throughout. Laurel's a faerie, and faeries are plants. On her back, a blossom sprouts annually; she binds it down under her shirt to keep the secret. Briefly visiting magical Avalon, where she was born (but which she doesn't recall), she studies plant lore and faerie society. As is traditional in supernatural romance, two boys want her: human David, warm and devoted, and faerie sentry Tamani, sizzlingly attractive and pining for Laurel's return. Trolls stalk and entrap Laurel and her loved ones in the human world, seeking revenge and the gateway into Avalon, while a slick human woman with a special-ops team helps defeat trolls but rouses Laurel's suspicion. As in Wings (2009), Pike brazenly codes physical deformity and asymmetry as evil, and her engagingly clear prose sometimes blunders into floridness when describing Avalon. Among the current cornucopia of supernatural romances (and despite the presumably unintentional humor of a heroine who literally tastes like nectar), though, this one blooms. (Fantasy. YA)

School Library Journal (Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2010)

Gr 7-10 This sequel to Wings (HarperTeen, 2009) begins with Laurel going to the Academy of Avalon to begin a summer of intensive training as a Fall faerie in order to protect her family from the threat of her troll nemesis, Jeremiah Barnes. The strict faerie social hierarchy begins to wear on her, causing her to question her place in that society. When she goes back to her life in the human world, she constantly feels the strain of wondering when Barnes will make his next move. Her relationship with David, her human boyfriend, has deepened, but she still feels ties to Tamani, her faerie sentry, and she constantly questions where she belongs. In the end, she is forced to choose between her two worlds. Pike develops her world with limited success. While Avalon is slightly interesting, Laurel's time there drags. Pike makes several attempts to explain historical and mythological people and events so they fit into her worldEve, it seems was a misunderstood faeriewithout fully fleshing out the whys or hows. The first part of the book plods and it is only toward the last 50 pages that the action picks up. Fans of the first book likely won't notice the overwrought writing and poor world-building, but others would do well to seek out the many other, better faerie stories.— Necia Blundy, Marlborough Public Library, MA