This will always be one of those books that even with all of my reasoning I'll wonder why I couldn't enjoy it, because on paper it is the kind of book I like: Fantasy, Young Adult, inspired by other famous works, etc. So why didn't I like it?

I hated the fairies. They were annoying and I wanted to swat them until they were dead or unable to speak. They don't add anything to the plot and are just there to cause trouble. I assume they are there to be funny too, but they didn't make me laugh once. They were essentially children doing what children do.

I also didn't care for the love interests much. Nate was just a bore. I saw his positive and negative traits, but he read as flat. Perhaps if I saw his character more I could have grown to care about him, but I didn't. As for Ariel, he just barely got a twinge of sympathy from me. Sadly that sympathy turned me a tad against Bertie, who previously I felt nothing for.

The antagonism is also so passive. No one actively tried to stop Bertie from putting on Hamlet. It was just one random obstacle after the other. Not even Ariel, who does the most damage, is really out to stop her play; he just wants to be free.

These are the reasons that I can come up with to justify why I dislike this book, which I really didn't want to. I wanted to like it. So much that even after I read it and disliked it, I read the second one, because I hoped I had just been having a rough day when I read the first one.