Tree Shepherd's Daughter (The Faire Folk Trilogy #1) Book

When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Keelie Heartwood is forced to leave her beloved California to live with her nomadic father at a renaissance festival in Colorado. After arriving, Keelie finds men in tights and women in trailer trash-tight bodices roaming half-drunk, calling each other lady and lord even after closing time! Playacting the Dark Ages is an L.A. girl’s worst nightmare.

Keelie has a plan to ditch this medieval geekland ASAP, but while she plots, strange things start happening—eerie, yet familiar. When Keelie starts seeing fairies and communicating with trees, she uncovers a secret that links her to a community of elves. As Keelie tries to come to grips with her elfin roots, disaster strikes, and Keelie’s identity isn’t the only thing that’s threatened.

One part human determination and one part elfin magic, Keelie Heartwood is a witty new heroine in a world where fantasy and reality mix with extraordinary results.

VOYA

Devastated by the loss of her mother, fifteen-year-old Keelie is in no mood for a reunion with her absentee father, particularly when that means leaving her beloved Los Angeles for a scruffy itinerant Renaissance festival in Colorado. Keelie is determined to stay only until she can find a way to return to California. Her new "medieval" home is a very unusual place for a modern city girl. The fair folk never seem to want to give up their Renaissance playacting, even when the public has gone home. To further add to her confusion, her father is proving to be a tender, caring man, who seems to truly love her despite her conviction that he abandoned her and her mother. Keelie also discovers that a strange affinity that she has always had for wood is blooming into a mystical ability to communicate with the spirits of trees. This unusual power is finally explained when her father reveals that Keelie is half human and half elf. Now she is at the center of an increasing conflict between the elves, some of whom are not above using dark magic for their own ends. Although this fantasy has a promising premise, the characters are too sketchy to really fully engage the reader. Less attention to plot devices and more attention to characterization would have fleshed out the book and made it memorable. Nevertheless dedicated teen fantasy fans might enjoy the unusual atmosphere of the Renaissance fair setting in this first book in the planned Faire Folk Trilogy.