Anna and Abel couldn’t be more different. They are both seventeen and in their last year of school, but while Anna lives in a nice old town house and comes from a well-to-do family, Abel, the school drug dealer, lives in a big, prisonlike tower block at the edge of town. Anna is afraid of him until she realizes that he is caring for his six-year-old sister on his own. Fascinated, Anna follows the two and listens as Abel tells little Micha the story of a tiny queen assailed by dark forces. It’s a beautiful fairy tale that Anna comes to see has a basis in reality. Abel is in real danger of losing Micha to their abusive father and to his own inability to make ends meet. Anna gradually falls in love with Abel, but when his “enemies” begin to turn up dead, she fears she has fallen for a murderer. Has she?
Award-winning author Antonia Michaelis moves in a bold new direction with her latest novel: a dark, haunting, contemporary story that is part mystery, part romance, and part melodrama.
- Genre: Mystery, Fairy Tales, Contemporary, Drama
- Age: mature young adult/new adult
- Source: owned ebook
- Read from March 13 to 15, 2013
FINAL RATING: ★★★★★/★★★★★
“Go away princess. Leave your outlaw alone. You won't change him... go away, Anna, far away, and don't ever come back. The fairy tale doesn't have a happy ending.”
I think i tried to start this one at least 4 times, and i always dropped it and read something else. I was wrong. This book was simply not what i was used to reading, it was just...captivating of sorts. And, it was beautiful, amazing and heartbreaking. Seriously.
I loved the writing, it was so beautiful, sentences were wonderful... All the right words everywhere...I also loved that there were alternating POVs, and in third person...(finally something that isn't first person)...
The ice in his eyes had changed; it seemed to have become darker, like the dark, clear ice on a frozen lake whose depth suddenly becomes visible when the wind brushes the snow from the surface. It was an endless depth, bottomless, and almost totally black. She didn’t know which thoughts and creatures were swimming down there. They scared her. It was as if she were watching Abel drown in the waters of himself. She shook her head, trying to rid it of these thoughts.
I don't know...i just don't know what to think. I need to recover from reading this one. So many things that happened i never would expect, and the plot twists at the end of the book were....WAY TO WTF. IT WAS MIND F*CK ALL THE WAY.
I think the book had perfect ending, even though it was unexpected. I connected some dots, but i didn't want to believe in them. I suspected wrong people and thought the characters would choose right choices instead of wrong ones. Nothing is what it seems to be, and it will shock you...and probably make you weep...Now, this type of story leaves you thinking....how does it end? For those who wish to know how the story ends click: (spoiler) it is not HEA.... You have been warned!!! (end of spoiler)
“Me, too,” he said. “But not of those guys. They’re dumb. They’re so dumb. They live out there, you know, where we live, too. Everyone there … well, almost everyone … is dumb. Ignorant. It’s not their fault. They inherit the ignorance of their parents and hand it onto their children like a tradition, like a craft. They drink in the ignorance with their powdered milk, with each bottle of beer, and in the end they make their coffins of ignorance.”
“And … you?”
“Me?” He understood and laughed. “I don’t know. I’m a slipup. A mistake. An accident. I guess Michelle managed to bed some intellectual. I’ve always been different. And maybe back then … when I was very small … maybe she was different, too. I don’t remember. Maybe she was a mother … before she gave up being anything at all.”
STORY:
The story follows three people: Anna, Abel and Micha.
Anna is the random student, who lives in a perfect world, sheltered from everything, with perfect, normal and amazing family, with lots of friends. And then she finds a doll. And that doll belonged to Abel Tannatek, the drug dealer from her school. After talking for a while, he told her that the doll belongs to his sister. Anna wonders if what he said was true and wanted to see what Abel was hiding from the world. After stalking him, she finds out that he really has a sister, Micha. Abel and Micha are half siblings, sharing the same mother. What she didn't expect was that Abel is a storyteller. He sat with Micha and told her a story about a Cliff Queen, who was alone on the island with her doll. Everyone wanted to own, to possess and to kill the Cliff Queen, because she possessed something that little people possessed...A heart of diamond.
“But what does he want my heart for?" the little queen asked.
"He just wants to own it," replied the sea lion. "That is enough. He wants to look on its beauty and know that his hands alone can touch it.
Little did Anna know, that everything that happened in the story was happening in the real life as well. The story is one big metaphor of choosing the right choices, leave when you see the danger... Micha, a six year old girl, listened very carefully to it...and so did Anna.
CHARACTERS
♦ Anna:
Anna, Anna, Anna..... Her choices, her decisions, everything about her made me wonder...Is it even possible to be like her? She met Abel, she wanted to help him, and then....whole world turns upside down... So many things happened and her decisions and behavior astonished me... I don't know...I seriously don't know...I liked her nonetheless, i liked her so much...
SERIOUS SPOILERS:
(spoiler)how can she just go on after he raped her? How could she
even touch him afterwards? I would be too scared to do that...and it
shows just how much she loved him.......But she was in love with wrong
person in the end... (end of spoiler)
♦ Abel:
Drug dealer, aka, the Polish Peddler and another main character of this story. He is broken, he is messed up from the inside and he is well aware of that fact. He doesn't want to change it, he doesn't want any help. He is absolute and utter mess. I am conflicted at what to think of him. I liked him but at the same time i hated him. Some things that he had done were unforgivable, but i understood him, especially after he told Anna everything. He loves Micha beyond everything, he would do everything for his little sister, and it was devastating to know what he had gone through for her....
SERIOUS - END OF THE BOOK TYPE SERIOUS- SPOILERS(read at your own risk):
(spoiler)How could he rape Anna??? I mean, he just lost control
and everything, and she wanted to have sex with him, and he did warn her
not to do that...but still........i was so shocked that my love toward
him turned into hate and disgust...
Not to mention that he turned out to be [ murderer as well, that he killed all of those people while i suspected Bertil.....I just don't know..... he had the reasons, and he did all of that for Micha... but it doesn't give you right to kill people who stand in your way. Don't let me begin on his history of whoring himself as well...I get it that he needed money....but it was horrible to know what he had gone through, and even more horrible that he had done to Anna the same thing he had gone through by Micha's father.
And then...he killed himself. It was what he wanted from the beginning, but he was to afraid to leave Micha alone, and he never wanted for her to go through what he did....Oh god, how i cried :(
Oh god, Abel is so fucked up =_= (end of spoiler)
Not to mention that he turned out to be [ murderer as well, that he killed all of those people while i suspected Bertil.....I just don't know..... he had the reasons, and he did all of that for Micha... but it doesn't give you right to kill people who stand in your way. Don't let me begin on his history of whoring himself as well...I get it that he needed money....but it was horrible to know what he had gone through, and even more horrible that he had done to Anna the same thing he had gone through by Micha's father.
And then...he killed himself. It was what he wanted from the beginning, but he was to afraid to leave Micha alone, and he never wanted for her to go through what he did....Oh god, how i cried :(
Oh god, Abel is so fucked up =_= (end of spoiler)
♦ Micha:
Is so very adorable...she loves Abel and later she loves Anna as well. She is cute, smart, wonderful and amazing child. Abel protects her from everything every way that he can...
"They stopped in front of the window; it was the window of a Chinese restaurant, and there was a red dragon painted on it. Next to that dragon Micha had written: “K IS EacH Oth ER.”
Abel looked at Anna. Anna looked at Abel.
“She is the little queen,” said Abel, “in our fairy tale, at least.”
“One must obey the queen,” said Anna."
♦ Others:
Anna's parents were great, amazing and wonderful people. They wanted to help, and they did, more than any of them could ever imagine. Gitta, Anna's best friend irritated me because she called Anna "Little Lamb"...well, she was not so bad, she was actually nice character... Bertil......oh god. No comment. All of the other characters were amazing as well :D
OVERALL:
This is amazing book. Its so unexpected, different, abnormal. It left me wonder many, many times...What are people willing to do for the people they love? How far are they willing to go? Would they destroy their own happiness in the process? Will they forgive the wrong that was done to them? How will they live with the consequences of their choices?
Beautiful, beautiful book.
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