Rating: 
Summary: Definitely modern; and accurate
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this heart-stopping novel to the brim. It included everything that I always love about fantasy novels and it also had a great deal of accurate folklore included. Forget about the stereotypical "fairies" created by the media, these faeries are the real deal and give greater depth and reality to the plot. I enjoyed this novel because of how Holly Black genuinely and naturally encorporated the real world with the "faeire" world. I love how the backdrop is in a run-downed town in New Jersey near water. This is the kind of locale I love in a book. I'm also a big fan of romance, so it was great reading about [Rath]Robein[Rye]. The detail in the descriptions is also unbelievable. This book is one of those books that everyone reads in one go and grips the pages until the end [and regrets finishing so fast]. I hope Holly Black writes a sequel/any other related books. She's a wicked author.
Rating:
Summary: The Wicked Fairies Strike
Review: Are you ready to visit the lands of the fairies? Are you ready to find out about the little creatures that so many stories misunderstand? This book is a twist of modern life and fantasy creatures. Come and jump in to the book called Tithe, where not all the fairies are little, kind, and sweet.
It all starts out in the modern day city and the modern day life of a girl. Her name is Kaye, and her mother is in a rock band. Kaye's mother had just finished a performance went to the bar to get a drink. All of a sudden, one of the band members attacked Kaye's mom for no reason. Her mother and Kaye got safely out of the bar and left for their apartment. Soon, Kaye and her mother have to go move to Kaye's childhood home. There she meets her friend Janet, after many long years off not seeing each other. In her hometown, where she is now, is the place was she first met and saw the fairies. Each day and night, she tries to get a hold of her fairy friends. Soon, she gets involved with the fairies of a court called Unseelie. Then very soon after, she is contacted from her fairy friends, and she is sent a warning not to talk to any of the Unseelie Court. Hurt and confused, Kaye meets up with her fairy friends and is told what is going on. She finds out some shocking news about her friends, the Unseelie Court, the Seelie Court (another fairy court), and about herself. She soon learns that she has a big part to play in the world of the fairies and that she has a connection with the fairies. Then through the rest of the book, Kaye goes through many shocking and weird experiences with the fairies of both the Unseelie and Seelie Courts. The end of the book comes with surprises and romance. This book does not have a boring ending and the end of the chapters do not leave you asking questions.
This book would be good for teenagers and adults. Also, I would like to add that this book is just great for boys and girls. You would probably want to read this book more than once. Also, the book goes in to fairies a lot, and it's great to read a book that has fairies that are not all frill and sweetness. I hope you find this useful, and I hope this perks your interest to read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great creativity, bad plot
Review: There is no doubt that the author had a very good imagination while developing this story but the plot does not quite live up to the creativity that was put into it. All the book mainly focuses on is the romance between Kaye and another fairie. There is no development with the other parts of the novel, such as explanations of the fairie realm. I would have liked to know more about Kaye's species, the pixies, and how they were respected or disliked in the fairie realm more than just reading about her romantic involvements. Sure a book should have romance but it should not just be focused on that which it kind of was.
Rating:
Summary: A fabulous book for adult and young adult readers alike.
Review: Tithe is an exciting book, particularly from a new author, and I was so absorbed in the plot I finished it in under a day. Black has a highly detailed touch when it comes to description, particularly when describing the differences in human and faery senses. Her dialogue sounds real, and the actions and reactions of her characters ring true. I eagerly await her next book.
Rating: 
Summary: strange but good
Review: One thing you may want to know about this book is that it is not for younger people. With that out of the way, I recommend this for more mature teenagers who wont abuse what they read by repeating what they see. That said, this book is great.I saw it on the shelf of a bookstore and just picked it up and bought it. This book opens up a world of teen angst, in a hardcore form. Unfortunately, it portrays some of what life is like. I should know because I am an older teen myself. Im afraid what turns people off from it is the fact that they dont want to read about how dirty life can be. Thats too bad. Real characters with real flaws and a great fantasy/reality plot make this a great read. Period.
Rating:
Summary: powerful, deep but dark fantasy
Review: For six years, Ellen accompanied by her daughter Kaye and the members of her band, Stepping Razor, tour seedy bars and worse joints in an attempt to become rock stars. However, everything suddenly collapses when Kaye, now sixteen, intercedes when another band member wields a knife towards the back of her mom. Ellen concludes this is a prudent time to go home so she and Kaye return to her mother's New Jersey house where they used to live.Near the Jersey shore, Kaye thinks she is finally gaining a bit of normalcy when she meets her childhood friend Janet. However, the wished upon ordinary vanishes with an encounter in the woods. Kaye rescues Roiben, a mysterious looking Knight and finds her fabrication of reality altered. Kaye learns that she is a changeling-and her childhood imaginary faerie playmates were not only real, but pushed her to pretend to be a human purebred. They want to sacrifice her to pay the TITHE in exchange for seven years of freedom. Fans of dark fantasies will want to pay the TITHE in order to read a powerful, deep adult fairy tale. The story line is exciting and turns quite vivid when Kaye travels to the Unseelie Court. Fairies seem so real with interwoven items like a clear social structure adding layers to their existence. However, what makes Holly Black's novel worth reading is the heroine who struggles with her new discoveries and her tribulations of keeping one foot in each realm. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading
Review: I enjoyed both the plot and the theme, and thought the use of inventive fairies in a story, unusual. The characters, as out of control teenagers living in their imperfect lower class world, were interesting elements in our sea of either plastic perfect, or predicatably flawed characters that we often find in other novels. Some criticise the language and mature themes, but I found that, forwarned, it only added believability to the flawed subjects. Not for kids, but hey, not everything should be.
On the negative side, the dialogue was often unrealistic, short and choppy, to the point of making some scenes hard to follow (the author knew what was happening, but I was sometimes unsure). Teenagers might talk the way the author depicted, but writers need to work at it more than teenagers do. At times, the actions and motivations of the characters were illogical, or worse, not fully explained, including the main characters too-quickly shifting relationships (virtually all of them).
The technical skill of the author is still a book or two away from being fully professional. However, the story is engaging, and somewhat unique, making the read worth the price. Other, better written works, might be much easier to set aside, proving that a good overall idea and approach is worth a lot more than is often given credit.
Buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Holly Black: A new edgy YA novelist
Review: Kaye does not live the average life of a sixteen-year-old. She has spent much of her adolesent life following her rock star mother, Ellen, and her band around the country. Everything is urned aroudn when Ellen's boyfriend tries to kill her after a show in Philly. Now she and Kaye are heading back towards New Jerey where Kaye hasn't been since first grade. Back then she was completely convinced that she had fairy friends, and everyone knew her and made fun of her for it. But now that she's returned she's finding out more about faerie that she could ever imagine. It all begins when she runs into a sexy blonde guy faerie and saves his life. She then learns from some of her old faerie friends that she is in fact, a faerie (a pixie to be more exact) and the faerie kind is being held under tyranny in the Unseelie court. Fortunately there is a way that Kaye can help the Unseelie court fall from control. Unfortunately it means offering up herself as human sacrifice. But fortunately if everything goes according to plan she won't have to die. Unfortunately nothing goes according to plan. Although the beginning is weak and the writing at some parts looks like it needs some work, Tithe proves to be a new edgy fantasy faerie tale with much scarier faeries. These faeries are not all sweet and innocent. They live in a world where morals are not quite what they are in the human world. Some of the characters remain sadly underdeveloped (for example Ellen) but the ones that take center stage really shine. Like many other first novels, this book, although not perfect, is enthralling. I could barely put it down. I hope the rumors are true and Holly Black is going to write a sequel to it. I would recommend this book to YA readers (and maybe a few adults reader too) that are looking for a great escape read of supernatural proportions. Sure, there is smoking, swearing, implied sex, and a little bit of drinking, but I don't think it's as shocking as other reviewers have seen it as. It's not for younger kids of course but YA readers can take it.
Rating:
Summary: Edgy, gritty--faeries who don't pull punches
Review: One of the worst things about growing up under the steel clutch of the Disney fist was having to endure saccharine, sweet, cute, anemic faeries. Holly Black gives us true faeries as they were shown in myth and legend: scary, nasty, bloody-minded, inhuman (with their own agendas), sometimes cute, more often great and awe-inspiring, and by now means *safe.* Her protagonist is Kaye, who returns to her childhood home only to discover she is a pawn and intended sacrifice (the Tithe) between the Unseelie (dark faery) and Seelie (bright faery, but that doesn't mean nice!) courts. Kaye has been living on the fringes for some time now, dragged here and there by her loving but dysfunctional mother, hanging with the crowd that has nowhere to go, when she can find a crowd to hang with. It's life as it's lived in trailer parks and on boardwalks, life as seen by teen auto mechanics and young people in search of the next rave while looking for some kind of meaning to their lives. Through Kaye's encounters with faery knights, queens, and the unbound faeries who were her childhood friends, she learns of her own faery side and, most wonderfully, of her deeply human heart. Certainly this is not a book for adults who believe they can keep children safe by wrapping them in cotton wool. It is a story for those adults and teens who prefer life with grit, terror, and splendor. If you want legends with real blood in their veins, this is the book to read.
Rating:
Summary: aswome for girls who want to experience a true faerie tale
Review: To me(a teen reader) this book was really good, and i wouldn't mind another one. I loved how the herone wasnt perfect she had her flaws ,too.Would you want to read a story about someone who did everything right, never ate junk food, made all the right decisions, had a very high selfesteem, and was pretty???
This book had everything a real faerie tale needed, exitement, love, a problem that needed solving, blood, magic, adventure, and mystery.the faeries in this book are true, not those faeries you see in those Disney stories, but the ones like in the old and original faerie tales, fierce, chunning, HUMAN with their own persisnallity, have feelings, and relate to YOU!
Kaye has never had a normal life, her mother is in a rock band and they moove around the country all the time. then one day an incident causes them to move back to their old childhood home. There Kaye meets up with her old friends and discovers that she is chosen to be in a ritual called a Tithe(if the unseelie court does not perform it all the faeries in the area will be free for 7 years) . Her faerie friends help her all the way, even till their death. There she falls in love with a hansome faerie (robien) who likes her, too.
They try to stop the unseelie court from performing the tithe, and they do,but then the results are troubling.
To find out the rest, you'll just have to read the book!
I rccomend this book to mature readers because there were some inappropiate subjects, but just because we read baout them doesn't mean we are going to do them. it depends on you if you read this or not.
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