W is for Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

I'm one of more than 1500 bloggers taking part in the A-Z Blogging challenge this year. The goal is to blog everyday in April - except Sundays. You don't need a theme...but I've got one.

It's called watchYAreading. Each day, I'll blog about a  young adult book I have read - and loved (or at least really liked). 

Growing up, I was obsessed with Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairies, a humorous and beautifully illustrated scrapbook of...well, fairies squished between its pages, some of them crude, others fairy tale beautiful. Between that book and Disney's Tinkerbell, I admit, I had a somewhat narrow view of the fae.

Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely changed that. While I have blogged about the rest of the series in this A toZ Challenge, Wicked Lovely is truly the book that started it all...and Melissa Marr may very well be the reason I began writing young adult fiction in earnest. 

From the opening page, I was drawn in to a faery world so different from my previous perceptions - and Marr uses brilliant writing, incredible characterization, and swoon-worthy romance to keep you turning the pages...well into the night.

Is this your "W" book of choice? Let me know what you think in the comments below and at the end of the month I'll choose three readers to win a copy of SPIRITED, an anthology of haunting YA fiction.

Now, go check out the rest of the blogs in the A-Z Challenge, including my Dawn Ius site where I blog about songs and artists who have inspired me, and at the Most-Wanted Monsters blog where the awesome Judith Graves and I are waxing poetic about 26 creeptastic beasties.

- Dawn