Abandoned Things by Chani Lynn Feener
I received this book for free. This does not impact my review in any shape or form.
Abandoned Things, by Chani Lynn Feener, is an urban fantasy about an author who must contend with the horror of potentially ruining thousands of lives for his story, and hopelessly falling in love with one of those lives. Frankie is a best selling young adult novelist who became famous for the Silver and Gold Volumes. Things come to a head when a rather important side character, Rook, Prince of the Bronze Kingdom, suddenly comes to life. Amidst the confusion, Frankie and Rook must find a way to save Rook’s world from Talia, the Queen of Iron, before Frankie loses himself to Rook, as well as the story he created.
Frankie is living my worst nightmare. I don’t care if Rook’s sexy, or that he’s good in bed, or that they live happily ever after; if my characters came to life, they’d kill me for all the shit I put them through. As Rook put so eloquently, if the four kingdoms are real, then Frankie is singlehandedly the reason why so many lives were lost. That being said, I enjoyed Rook and Frankie’s interactions with one another; they were funny, and I was glad to see Rook growing as a person, that even though Frankie denied his existence, he continued to act without his approval. Rook even acknowledged him as his creator, and yet acted of his own accord. He was rebellious, and that was something I enjoyed. True, it got them both into some tricky situations, but it was through Rook’s ingenuity that Frankie was able to survive.
The entire book reminds me of a Greek legend, Pygmalion and Galatea. It’s about a sculptor named Pygmalion who fell in love with his sculpture, Galatea. After seeing his sincerity, Aphrodite takes pity on the poor man and grants him his desire. Similarly, although Frankie thinks Sage was his type, he binds himself to Rook through his own trauma. There’s a reason why he gave Rook his necklace after all. And in a way, when Rook’s father attempted to take control of Frankie, it could be viewed as Frankie’s past coming back to haunt him. From the scenes Feener’s shown us, his parents gave him a rather messy childhood, and through the confrontation with the King of Iron, it seemed Frankie was trying to find his strength in his creations. While I don’t necessarily think that Rook should’ve permanently remained in the real world, I’m still pretty happy with the ending overall.
As such, I would give this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars.
