Lament

Lament
Maggie Stiefvater
325 pages
Publisher: Flux
Source: booksfree.com
★★★★☆

You can read the Goodreads summary here.

I really enjoyed Stiefvater's Wolves of Mercy Falls series and I recently read (and raved) about her latest novel, The Scorpio Races.  So I didn't need much convincing to give Lament a try and I'm glad I did - I really enjoyed the novel!

Deirdre is an insanely gifted harp musician and performs in public regularly, despite her nerves.  Before one performance, she meets Luke, a mysterious young man who helps calm her fears and performs a duet with her - winning the competition!  Soon Deirdre learns she can see fairies, but Luke is a soulless fairy assassin, and despite them falling in love, he's on a mission to kill her for the Queen.

I was struck right away by the plot - as a reader I was thrown right into it rather abruptly.  It seemed rather intense (and random) how Deirdre and Luke met and that intensity stayed throughout the novel with a great sense of urgency in the words Stiefvater crafted.  Lament is definitely a page-turner.

This book had all the things a great YA novel has - mystery, deception, romance, and even a little love triangle.  That triangle came to a head by the end of the novel, though not in the way you would expect, and that's where I found I couldn't turn the pages fast enough.  I knew who Deirdre loved, but that didn't mean I knew how it would end!  In fact, that's pretty much how the whole novel went for me.  I thought I knew how this book was going to go, but it actually turned out quite different and quite beautifully.

Four stars!  I really enjoyed this take on Celtic faerie lore and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel, Ballad.  If you're a Maggie Stiefvater fan and you haven't checked out Lament or Ballad yet, I really hope you do.