Book 48 and a Plea to the Powers that Be

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Heather Swain's Selfish Elf Wish is book 48. It's a cute story about an Elvin family who moves from their hidden town of Averland to Brooklyn. It's actually a sequel, though it's easy enough to understand without having read the first book. It's another teen age love story with a splash of supernatural.

I found Zephyr, the main character, to be a pretty typical altruistic YA mc. On the other hand, I found her cousin Briar to be refreshing. Briar seemed more like a real teen ager (or real person) to me. She's not a bad person. She has no desire to really hurt anyone, but she wants to get what she wants too and she's willing to take some risk and be michevious to do it. But she's not mean girl. Briar and Zephyr each have a crush on a boy that can't make up his mind. Their reacations are totally different. Briar is waiting for him to make up his mind and Zephyr just waits. I don't really like that Zephyr felt she had to wait around forever for this boy to decide he was over his ex, but I think a lot of young girls (and even old ones) find them self in that situation. But at least in the beginning, I didn't really like Zephyr's crush, Timber. She freaks out and gets kind of jealous, but she admits it. He just tells her it won't work if she's going to act "crazy." And Beth would have said, "Loser, if I tell you I'm jealous that you're making out w/ your ex on stage and she's glaring at me while kissing you, you say "Sweetheart, you have nothing to worry about." Not that I'm acting crazy! You wanna see crazy??? But Zephyr admits to acting crazy and goes home feeling bad.

Throw in some almost accidental love spells and a pair of dark elves and things get a little crazy. But all is well that ends well. Everything works out.

Now for my desperate plea to the powers that be in YA, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE quit publishing present! This book was okay, but present always annoys me and it gets awkward. It's not just this one, several YA books have been printed in present recently, and I can't think of a good reason for it. I've only seen one author be able to use the present tense in such a way so that it was not distracting. Even she had moments that could only be described as wordy awkwardness. Meanwhile, many a good book have suffered from this presentitis. So let's cure the plague and root the words back where they must be by the time something has been reduced to writing!