Fairytale Come Alive by Kristen Ashley

3.5 Stars


This is a standalone book by this author. She tends to write series, but there are a few out there like this. I hadn’t picked it up for a while because the premise didn’t seem like something that I wanted to read about. Guy and girl meet and fall in love, but are torn apart. He marries someone else who dies and is “haunting” them when girl returns. Guy hates girl for leaving. Girl had reasons to leave (heartbreaking reasons). Guy and girl fall in love again with his dead wife watching through her ghostly vigil. The part that I had the hardest time with was that Prentice (aforementioned “guy”) got married and fell in love with someone else. Someone who he deeply loved and still loved and missed. While Isabella (aforementioned “girl”) lead a terrible lonely life! I actually enjoyed Isabella’s back story. It was heartbreaking, but perfect. There needed to be a pretty good reason why she would walk away from Prentice and there is!

Prentice was angry well Isabella comes back to Scotland and lands in his life while he is trying to pick up the pieces of his kids losing their mother and him losing his wife. It has been a year and a half since she died and they are all still grieving. Isabella is the last person he wants to see and he lets her know it! He is a big jerk to her and the whole village is a big jerk to her! It made me cry many times because she didn’t deserve that!

Prentice eventually learns the truth and falls for Isabella again. The author tries to make their love seem epic, but this is coming after he led a long happy life with another woman whom he loved deeply! I think this is where my naivety comes into play because that part bothered me. Usually KA makes the women before/between the heroine into nasties or no big deal, but Fiona (aforementioned ghostie) was written as practically perfect in every way (just like Mary Poppins).

I loved the drama and danger. I didn’t feel like Isabella was overreacting to her own fears about being with Prentice again. I thought she handled almost everything how many women would. She was incredibly likeable.

I actually don’t have a favorite quote that doesn’t have a swear word in it which means they mostly came out of Prentice’s mouth.