A Cosmic Joke

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TL;DR-- read a modern fairy tale, watch a Hallmark Channel movie, stream a rom-com, or indulge in whatever your guilty pleasure of choice is, but save your time and pass on Fairy Godmothers, Inc.

I'm a sucker for anything fairy tale-related and have an inexplicable attraction to the fake relationship trope, so when this popped up on my dash, I hit request. I'm sleep-deprived and cold because fall weather decided to show up like Maleficent at the birth announcement after we were hit with a heatwave, so I wanted to curl up with something light and fun for my brain. And since it's not quite Hallmark movie season yet, I settled for Fairy Godmothers, Inc. thinking it'd be a good substitute. It was a mistake.

Fairy Godmothers, Inc. is definitely not the kind of feelgood, cotton candy fluff that make made-for-TV Christmas movies such a ubiquitous guilty pleasure (and it's certainly not filled with the family-friendly you find on the Hallmark channel.) As much as Hallmark movies are mocked for their lack of depth and original content, Fairy Godmothers, Inc. is even worse. DeWylde goes on and on about how "there's more to a relationship than sex," but the first half of the book where sex is essentially the plot says otherwise. I finished this in a couple of hours, and while this is a quick read in general, the fact that I skipped chunks of paragraphs in the beginning definitely helped cut down on my reading time.

This reads like a really bad rom-com. (And yes, I know most rom-coms aren't necessarily characterized by amazing writing, but there are good-bad ones and bad-bad ones, and this is the latter.) The attempts at humor feel disingenuous which is kinda weird thing to say, but the whole thing felt like DeWylde was trying too hard to be funny. The characters are flat, and there's no real romance because the book pretty much starts out with Lucky and Ransom wanting to jump each other's bones. There's an attempt to tell an actual story about halfway through the book, but the obstacles are completely ridiculous. Just when you think it can't get any more over-the-top, it does. (It starts with the fact that they can't truly be together without horrible things happening and, I kid you not, it actually goes downhill from there.) I'd have an easier time suspending disbelief if you told me you were a fairy godmother who could fly than I would believing any of the reasons Lucky and Ransom gave for why they can't be together 🙄.

The best part of the book was Ever After, Missouri but there's nothing particularly special or original about the setting. The attempt to throw in some Japanese folklore (to mix things up a little, I guess?) doesn't seem to mesh well with the quaint, fairy tale-inspired small town vibes that were built for most of the book. This is apparently the first in a series and though there are attempts to drum up interest for subsequent books by introducing characters who will ostensibly end up in the sequels, I have no interest in reading more about the budding romance between Lucky's soon-to-be divorced BFF and Ransom's right-hand man, Rosebud Briar and Ravenna Blackheart, the reformed Evil Queen, Prince Phillip Charming the frog, or Zuri Davis, the heartbroken new hire at Fairy Godmothers, Inc.