Review- Thin Air

Title: Thin Air
Author: Lynn Seresin
Publisher: Self-published
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Book given by the author in exchange for an honest review

Alice Ayre is no ordinary teenager. She took her first name from a statue in Central Park, pulled her last name out of the air (literally), and she’s actually almost a thousand years old. In fact, the only “ordinary” thing about Alice is that she’s in love.

Alice was a sylphid—a winged air spirit—when she spotted Daniel Field camping in the Adirondacks and lost her heart to the handsome NYU student. Intangible to the human senses, her only hope of winning his heart resides in becoming mortal, even though transmutation is forbidden by Paralda, ruler of the air. Risking punishment, however, seems a small price to pay for a chance at true happiness.

Tracking down Daniel in New York City ends up being surprisingly easy. Getting noticed by him for all the right reasons is another story, especially when the human world keeps tossing challenges in Alice’s path. Just when she’s mastered zippers and buttons, she catches herself dropping a sugar packet into her coffee and mistaking a photo of John Lennon for one of Daniel’s relatives.

Her eccentricities raise the occasional eyebrow with Daniel and his friends, but her quirky charm, sweetness, and sincerity win out. Before long, she lands a job, begins a relationship with Daniel, and starts settling into her new life—until her past comes after her.

My take: 

When I first received Thin Air in the mail, I was so surprised by how thick it is. I even kind of avoided because of the length. But then my review book started piling up and I made a decision to just get through them no matter what. And I literally read Thin Air in less than two days!

The first aspect of the book that really pulled me in was the sheer creativity of the characters. I have never read a book where the author turned the simple elements of the environment into actual creatures that make the wind blow or the rain fall. It caught my curiosity so immediately that I instantly wanted to know more about the elementals.

I really enjoyed the supernatural world that Seresin created. Just above the clouds, live a type of elementals called the air sylphids. Their main job is to make the clouds which is pretty cool. I wish my job was to just make clouds! So after living for years and years without mating with one of her own, she falls in love with a human and eventually decides that she needs to become human herself to truly be happy.

The only thing I didn’t like about this book was how fast she found Daniel. She was thrown in the middle of New York City, completely naked, without even a name and she manages to find Daniel within a matter of hours. It seems a little unlikely to me but I guess her story with Daniel was more important than her journey to find Daniel.

My most favorite parts of the book were when she was figuring out how to be a human and to do normal things that we do every day. They were really funny and it made me realize how often we take for granted normal things like eating or opening a can of coke.

Even though the ending was happy, there’s also this cliff hanger that makes me want to know what’s going to happen next or if she will ever be safe! And I must say this Daniel must be damn good-looking for so many women to be in love with him! I really enjoyed this book and it really is different, exciting and very creative! Definitely worth the read.