Summer Reading

I picked up this book from the library a few weeks ago for some light reading. It's a fantasy book with a heroine "graced" with the skill of killing. What? What are you reading? You may ask. Well, here's what I think about what I read.

Lady Katsa, 18 and able to kill a person with her pinky nail, is under her jerk-of-an-uncle's control. As king, he uses her to punish people who he thinks have wronged him in some manner. She just goes along with it, maiming people here and there but never killing, because otherwise she'll be locked away. To "redeem" her acts and defy her uncle, she and a few friends secretly perform heroic rescues and such. Enter her romantic subject. She meets Po, a prince also "graced" but with a skill of reading minds, on one of her rescues. Long review short, she and Po go off on an adventure, fall in love, and save a whole kingdom from a wicked king who was misusing his "grace."

Here are my brief thoughts:
I wanted a fantastical adventure: I got it.
I wanted well-developed characters & witty, funny dialogues: I mostly got it.
I wanted a satisfying ending and a moral to the story: eh, it was okay.
{I do have to mention, though, I was pleasantly surprised at a twist at the end.}
But what I was mostly expecting was a clean, easy-to-read, young adult fantasy book.
Yeah. Didn't get it here.
Um, since when do books written for 14-year-olds & up include a sex scene & a heroine who decides that having a "lover" is a better alternative than ever getting married? Maybe I'm just living under a rock. I can't believe it.

Totally ruined it for me. I wish I could do something about it, but I don't think the library would be very happy if I ripped a few pages out of the book. Stinks, because it really would have been an entertaining story.

Grade: D. Sorry, Kristin Cashore.