Fey, frogs, and one freaky family

Sometimes, an overload of fairy tale themes and tropes can wear you out.

Sunday is the youngest of seven daughters in a family that has seen some rough times. She loves to write, but her uber-strict, unfeeling mother has forbidden her to write about anything but past events. One day she meets a frog in the woods beyond her house, and is delighted when he asks her to read aloud from her journal. So begins an intense friendship that can never be anything more - or so Sunday thinks. Then she kisses him and rushes off, breaking his curse without knowing it. He turns back into Prince Rumbold and is determined to win Sunday over ... but there's one major issue. Her family has had a fall-out with the royal family, and there's no way the willful Sunday would betray her parents and siblings like that. Complicating things even more is Sunday's godmother/aunt, who arrives to give her and her siblings magic lessons. A long-awaited battle is about to commence, and both Sunday and Rumbold must be prepared to face their demons.

At its heart, Enchanted is concerned with two things: telling a love story and being clever with its placement of reworked fairy tales. It's hard to say which one takes precedence, and for me that is a weakness. The good news is that Sunday makes a decent heroine - smart, mature (for the most part), and curious. Her counterpart, Rumbold, is passionate, a bit intense, and generally swoon-worthy. Their pairing is a huge attraction and their scenes have a lot of spark and fizz to them. A theme of rebirth and letting go carries on through the story, especially concerning Rumbold's relationship with his deceased mother. Both protagonists have interesting relationships with their respective, well, posses: Sunday has great affection for her more spontaneous siblings, and Rumbold has a support system of royal officials.

Some of the other relationships don't work as well. Sunday's mother is so cold and alien that a later attempt to soften Mrs. Woodcutter feels entirely unearned. Similarly, Rumbold's father is kept at a distance, presumably so that we the readers don't feel too bad when we learn of the king's true alignment. There was also an uncalled-for out-of-character moment for Sunday during the climax where I wanted to reach into the story and slap her. 

But my real complaint is that this book is overstuffed with confusing backstory, a result of the author's obsession with "weaving" familiar fairy tale stories and ideas into her own story. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with this - creating an original cocktail of fairy tales has proven both lucrative and entertaining. But Kontis doesn't bring anything new to the table, instead relying on the reader to be amused by the next recognizable fairy tale trope. Why is a beanstalk involved in the climax? No reason other than to blandly reference "Jack and the Beanstalk." And the stuff that is interesting - the fact that both Rumbold and Sunday have fairy godmothers and both have a bit of fey in their blood - goes largely unexplained. Sunday's aunt shows up and she starts taking the magic lessons without making it clear why she wants to in the first place. If Kontis had lay off the self-aware references and instead mined her own world for ways to bring more life to her characters, I would've been happier.

Of course, there is some method to the madness - I imagine more will be revealed in the subsequent sequels about the Woodcutter sisters. Even so, the promise of a series doesn't necessarily excite me. I'm fine with having read to the end of Sunday's - and Rumbold's - story. Rating: 3.5 fey magic tricks out of 5.