Fairies in Feyland make Kaylin Gow's 'Bitter Frost' a great summer read

All her life, Breena had always dreamed about fairies as though she lived among them…beautiful fairies living among mortals and living in Feyland. In her dreams, he was always there the breathtakingly handsome but dangerous Winter Prince, Kian, who is her intended. When Breena turns sixteen, she begins seeing fairies and other creatures mortals don t see. Her best friend Logan, suddenly acts very protective. Then she sees Kian, who seems intent on finding her and carrying her off to Feyland. That’s fine and all, but for the fact that humans rarely survive a trip to Feyland, a kiss from a fairy generally means death to the human unless that human has fairy blood in them or is very strong, and although Kian seemed to be her intended, he seems to hate her and wants her dead.

This is the exciting premise of Kailin Gow's new young adult fiction novel, Bitter Frost (The Edge; June 2010).

Here's an excerpt:

The dream had come again, like the sun after a storm. It was the same dream that had come many times before, battering down the doors of my mind night after night since I was a child. It was the sort of dreams all girls dream, I suppose – a dream of mysterious worlds and hidden doorways, of leaves that breathe and make music when they are rustled in the wind, and rivers that bubble and froth with secrets. Dreams, my mother always told me, represent part of our unconsciousness – the place where we store the true parts of our soul, away from the rest of the world. My mother was an artist; she always thought this way. If it was true, then my true soul was a denizen of this strange and fantastical world. I often felt, in waking hours, that I was in exile, somehow – somehow less myself, less true, than I had been in my enchanted slumber. The real world was only a dream, only an echo, and in silent moments throughout the day it would hit me: I am not at home here.


I would shake the thought off, of course, dismiss it as stupid, try and apply my mother's armchair psychoanalysis to the situation. But then, before bed, the thought would come to me, trickle through the mire of worries (boys, school, whether or not I'd remembered to charge my IPod before getting into bed, whether or not my banner would be torn down yet again from the homeroom message board) – will I have the dream tonight? And then, another thought would come to me alongside it. Will I be going home again.
And the night before my sixteenth birthday, the dream came again – stronger and more vivid than it had ever come before, as if the gauzy wisp of a curtain between reality and dream-land had at last been torn open, and I looked upon my fantasy with new eyes.


I was a fairy princess. (When waking, I would chide myself for this fantasy – sixteen-year-old girls should want to start a fruitful career in environmental activism, not twirl around in silk dresses). But I was a fairy princess, and I was a child. I dreamed myself into a palace – with spires reaching up into the sun, so that the rays seemed to pour gold down onto the turrets. The floors were marble; vines bursting with flowers were wrapped around all the colonnades. The halls were covered in mirrors – gold-framed glass after gold-framed glass – and in these hundred kaleidoscopic images I could see my reflection refracted a hundred times.


I was a toddler – perhaps four, maybe five years old, decked out in elaborate jewels, swaddled in lavender silk, yards and yards of the fabric – the color of my eyes. I hated the color of my eyes in real life – their pale color seemed to make me alien and strange – but here, they were beautiful. Here, I was beautiful. Here, I was home.


Kailin Gow is the multi-published author of The Shy Girls Social Club Handbook for Dealing with Bullies and Other Meanies and 30 more books for teens and young adults, including The Gifted Girls Series which have been recommended by the Parents Teachers Association, PBS Kids, Homeschooling organizations, and Best Teens Books lists. Her fiction titles for older young adults and adults are: Diary of a Discount Donna (A Fashion Fables Novel), and the newly released The Phantom Diaries and Rise of the Fire Tamer (Wordwick Games Book 1). She holds a Masters Degree Communications Management from USC, and Bachelors Degrees in Drama and Social Ecology from UC Irvine. She is a mother, a mentor for young women, and the founder of the social group for girls age 13 to 19 called Shy Girls Social Club at shygirlssocialclub.com. You can sign up to follow her on Twitter at KailinGow, and can be reached at sparklesoup (dot) aol (dot) com.

You can visit her website at www.sparklesoup.com.

Kailin will be on virtual book tour June 1 - 11 '10. Visit her official tour page at Pump Up Your Book to find out more about her exciting new YA fiction novel, Bitter Frost.

Amazon or Barnes & Noble are the best way to obtain your copies, although it will be available to order in your local bookstores.


Bitter Frost by Kailin Gow