Book #30: My Fair Godmother (Whitney Book 10)

Title: My Fair Godmother
Author: Jannette Rallison

First of all, a plea: If you are an LDS author and have a book in the works, do not name one of your characters Tristan. In 2009, "Tristan" must have held the same power over LDS authors that "Jennifer" did in 1978 for pregnant mothers across America. If he swapped his dark hair for light, this Tristan could easily have grown up to be the Tristan in Lockdown, which doesn't help either book in my estimation.

Okay, now that I've gotten that off my chest, there were a lot of things I liked about My Fair Godmother. It's a book that I think my daughter would enjoy in a couple of years, once she stops thinking boys are yucky. Savannah is a sixteen-year-old who cares a lot more about boys, hair and clothes than she does about school. She's smart, but kind of an airhead. When Hunter, her boyfriend, decides he likes her brainy older sister Jane more than he likes Savannah, she wishes her life away. And she gets her wish, when a similarly airheaded fairy godmother, Chrissy, shows up to grant her three wishes. Savannah wishes for a prince to take her to the prom, and ends up living as Cinderella in the Middle Ages. Life in the Middle Ages isn't very much fun, so she begs to be rescued... right into life as Snow White. Finally, Chrissy brings her back to the modern era, but instead sends Tristan, Savannah's new crush, back to the past. Savannah decides she can't just leave him there, so she joins him, and eventually Jane and Hunter follow. The rest of the book is all about fighting dragons and ogres and black nights, drinking potions, and trying to survive in a world where people never bathe and own only one outfit.

The tone of My Fair Godmother is really light. It's the kind of book that seems to prepare young girls to grow up and read books like the Shopaholic series. I enjoy the Shopaholic books, and I enjoyed My Fair Godmother quite a bit, but even as Rallison says over and over again that life in the Middle Ages was smelly and hard, it's almost like she says it with a giggle. It's a fun book, but written in a way that it doesn't feel especially substantive. And while I like books like that, giving an award for it would feel like giving an Oscar for Leap Year instead of The Hurt Locker. But if it's more of an enjoyable read than the other YA novels (I've only read two so far so I may be getting ahead of myself here), then why shouldn't it win the award?