Review for Once Upon a Changeling by V.J. Chambers

Let me start by saying Once Upon a Changeling was a good read. I can't say that it was a great read, but it was good. It started out kind of slow for me; was kind of hard to get into but the end caught me and it was exciting so I was glad that I finished it.

Russ Knight is a teenage boy who's girlfriend, Cindi, cheated on him and got pregnant, then had a baby in the bathroom on prom night and tried to get rid of said baby by disposing of it in the garbage after trying to suffocate it. After this happened, she went on as usual and even went back to dance with her boyfriend. Sounds a little crazy, right? That was before she started rambling about how her baby was a changeling and they took the real baby and she was supposed to kill the changeling in order to get her real baby back. Interesting idea and very creative writing from V.J. Chambers, but even with all that going on I just thought Russ was kind of annoying. Here he has this beautiful, popular girlfriend who is just using him for appearance but she's sleeping with half the school behind his back. She gets pregnant by another guy and doesn't even know, goes to the bathroom during the school dance and delivers the baby, tries to kill it and Russ takes responsibility for this child even though he never even slept with his own girlfriend. My sentiments went out to him, but how could someone be so incredibly blind?

Needless to say Cindi ends up in a mental hospital and Russ loses all his friends while everyone continually ridicules him. He befriends a strange new girl, Puck. And Marcos, a guy from his shop class.

Puck turns out to be a faerie. She ends up helping Russ and Marcos in their endeavors to get the real baby back. The story picked up for me as it went along, but it never really popped.

I think the reason I had a hard time getting into this book was because it just fell a little flat. Russ was supposed to be brave, and he was at certain times, but he didn't seem like a hero to me. At least until the end. All in all I give the book 3 stars. It was well written and descriptive which was nice. A good read, but not a book I would read over and over again.