Well, it’s here. At long last we have come to the end of our journey. The last book in the UnEnchanted series. And what a wild ride it was, made all the wilder by this concluding book.
(If you’re interested in reading my reviews on the previous four books—UNENCHANTED, FAIREST, FABLE, and REIGN, you can find them pretty easily on my homepage. I think. I don’t really know how to work tumblr).
Where to even start. Or end, as it were. Prepare yourself for another incoherent rant.
We start off right where we left off—Teague destroyed the Godmother guild and now our heroes are running around with their heads cut off (figuratively, I feel like I had to clarify due to the craziness these books have thrown at me) trying to regroup. My first thought was, hold on, is this our old narrator? (because the last book had a different one and I was quite bitter, I’ll admit it). Sure enough, I checked and it was! Anyway, moving on. An extremely sad part came out of nowhere when a black omen dog (kind of like the dog of death in the third Harry Potter book) tracks Mina down to the safe house and her mom sacrifices herself because it won’t stop until it claims someone’s life (remember this for later, this is an important plot point). And dude…it was sad. Like, Charlie (Mina’s younger brother) who’s never spoken a word starts yelling “NOO” and “MOOM” while crying (well done, narrator, well done) and it was so sad.
The next note I made is not quite as sympathetic. I jotted down “ok this whole flower thing for the mom is sweet and all but can we get back to Teague.” Yes, I admit I have a thing for the tortured bad guys…though Teague is all sorts of messed up. Basically I’m left with him because I don’t ship Mina with Brody (never have, never will) and he was the only other option, sooo here we are. I’ve always liked Jared, too. ANYWAY
Now we end up at a carnival somehow (I apologize, due to the holidays and travel for a wedding it took me a while to write up this review so I didn’t remember details at the time) but I do remember Mina paying for a kissing booth that Brody is at for charity, and she gets sort of mad at him for not pushing the Mean Girl from book 1 away, but she realizes she isn’t jealous (YES YES YES FINALLY) and then decides to get back at Brody by paying to kiss another guy.
I can’t make this up.
And this other guy is suspicious and good looking and no one we know…which of course means it’s Teague in disguise. Which I called right away. And the kiss…okay, so it got awkward real fast. Again, having someone read it to you is the worst. There’s a phrase that went “he nuzzled her lips with his own” and I NEVER WANT TO HEAR THAT EVER AGAIN. And then the fairytale bad guys from the other books attack the carnival (and they have tesla coils or something? What?) and Teague basically says that he’ll keep coming after the people Mina loves unless she turns herself in, which is where the Beauty and the Beast thing comes in.
So things move along. Mina finally realizes she’s part Siren (thanks to her mom being the little mermaid, no I am not making this up) and has been compelling Brody to like her this whole time (cue happy dancing from me, SEE YA BRODY), she FINALLY admits to Brody that she fell in love with someone else (Teague) the night of the time traveling glass slippers and the ball, so she lets Nan have him as her best friend was supposed to, everyone is happy, they try to come up with a plan to trap Teague in a mirror world but Mina has a dream where that goes to complete crap (except for the part where she snuggles with Jared) so she decides the best course of action is to just turn herself in to Teague. He promises not to hurt Charlie, but then he gets bored and says he’s going to go after Charlie, Mina screams and cries about this for a few days before he comes back and says “just kidding,” (I would have stormed out because he broke the deal, but that’s just me), there’s also an adorable flirting in the library scene that made me smile too much simply because I am a librarian and was listening to this in a library and isn’t that every librarian’s fantasy.
Anyway, I’m going to jump to the end because we’re practically there and that’s what you’re all waiting for. Her mom’s side of the family (the sirens/mermaids, remember?) kidnap her back from Teague, so of course he goes on the warpath and they all end up by San Francisco Bay for the big showdown. And she and Teague face off…and she finally stabs him. After two books of avoiding it. And he dies…and then she begs this sea witch, the one who originally split him into two halves (long story but we met her earlier) to bring him back, like, make up your mind?? And the witch says I can’t, blah blah blah…and then she does. But only temporarily. He comes back as TWO DISTINCT SOULS because they were separated for long enough that now there’s two of them, and Teague jumps in front of the black omen dog who’s coming for Mina and it takes him and he dies (again). And Jared only sticks around long enough for a tearful goodbye before the sea witch can’t hold onto his essence any more and he disappears.
This is some Shakespearean tragedy.
But wait, there’s more. Mina knows something is wrong in the Fae plane now that Jared is dead. A-girl, whose name I can’t spell and can’t even remember right now, who was a contender for Teague’s heart back in the day, has set herself up as queen. Mina goes to confront her with the hope of putting the Fates (Teague’s parents) back on the throne I guess, but who really cares. And she gets there and lo and behold…TEAGUE IS NOW THE OMEN INSTEAD OF THE DOG! And A-girl orders him to attack Mina (and he can’t back off until he’s done his job). So Teague takes her to an in-between plane where he can talk to her and tells her to get the bone whistle from A-girl because that’s what controls him. So they go back to the normal world, there’s a scuffle, and Mina gets the bone whistle and sics Teague on A-girl instead of her, thus claiming the death he needs.
And then in the world’s strangest proposal Teague talks about how in the beginning of the world there was darkness and light and a balance between them (did someone say Reylo?) and I quote “his father the sun and his mother the moon” and that he is clearly the darkness and he needs a light queen to rule beside him.
And Mina says Yes.
And they live happily ever after.
I’m a writer and I couldn’t make this up.
In conclusion: if you’ve made it this far through all five of my rants, congratulations. I did really enjoy listening to this series, mostly for the craziness it put me through. Though I’ve basically spoiled the whole thing for you, I still think it’s worth a read (or a listen. Vastly entertaining that way). And then you can tell your friends and rant about it yourself.