This sounds like a recipe for a saccharine-sweet fairy tale with gooey dogooders and heavy handed morality handed down from on high. Nope, not even close. Sure, it's a fairy tale complete with singing bees and talking animals but the challenges facing Cinderella's descendant, one Jessica Harrison are charged by grief and anger after the death of one of her brothers and complicated by an ambitious fairy with a selfish agenda.

It doesn't help that Lilliana strongly resembles the girlfriend Jessica feels caused her brother's death, and that Jessica's remaining brother seems fascinated by Lilliana.

Kathleen Baldwin and Andrea Sisco have written a book that will appeal to preteens as well as older teenagers, heaped with fantasy but with some real issues underlying the motivations of the teens involved. The chapters are short and pithy, the evil-doer is a deliciously worthy opponent, and the fight scenes are compelling and exciting without being in the least gory.

DIARY OF A TEENAGE FAIRY GODMOTHER is the first in a new series by authors Kathleen Baldwin and Andrea Sisco. Although the setting is contemporary, the riviting battles and connection to the characters remind me some of the best scenes from Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Pyrdain. The growth the characters experience is real and affirming without being in the least preachy. I look forward to new books in the series.

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