It's the other way around with The Replacement.Īside from these non-writing nitpicks, I loved The Replacement. This is unusual, because cover styles for young adult books are often quite different each side of the pond and I usually think the UK gets the best of the deal. The other is purely subjective, but I much prefer the US cover art.

Surely, the cover blurb should follow the same rule? I was peeved. The spoiler is the biggest no-no of all when reviewing books for people who haven't read them yet. The cover blurb gives far too much away and a great deal of the menace and tension of the the first third of the story was diminished by it. I have two moans - neither are about the novel, but both are about the book. The scenes with the fey owe more to Tim Burton than they do to many other books in this overheated genre too - they're alluring but horrific, and I thought the underground world was marvellously realised. The first third of the book is all allusion, and there's a real sense of menace and tension as the plot builds up to the supernatural reveals and the journey Mackie must take if he's ever going to find a place in which he belongs. You genuinely feel for him and he speaks for many teenagers, not just supernatural ones, as he deals with insecurity and self-loathing. Because he's a changeling, he feels isolated and under constant pressure and it's made him painfully shy and introspective. Mackie's a tremendously attractive central character. She knows it wasn't her sister in that coffin and she wants Mackie to help her find the truth. But Tate won't keep quiet, won't keep the pact. It's the great taboo, the unspoken pact: Gentry's prosperity is maintaned by it, but its children pay the price.

But despite Mackie's obvious suffering, the issue is buried, always skirted around and never truly faced. And changelings don't live long in the human world. Mackie is a Replacement, a fey, a changeling. His friends know it - especially his best friend Roswell, the most loyal friend a person could ever have.

It's getting more and more difficult to avoid the truth. His allergies to blood and steel are getting worse and worse and his health is beginning to fail. People are getting nervous and it just won't stop raining. Recently, however, things have felt less secure. People are good and kind and the trials and tribulations of other places have traditionally been absent from Gentry. Mackie lives in Gentry, a prosperous but quiet town.

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff