Slumber - Tamara Blake

Slumber - Tamara Blake
Publisher - Diversion Books
Release date - July 16th 2013
Find - Goodreads

'Once upon a time, Ruby believed in magic…

When Ruby volunteers to take her mother's housecleaning shift at the Gothic Cottingley Heights mansion, she thinks it's going to be business as usual. Clean out the fridge, scrub toilets, nothing too unusual. But nothing could prepare her for the decadent squalor she finds within. Rich people with more money than sense trashing their beautiful clothes and home just because they can. After the handsome Tam discovers her cleaning up after him and his rich friends, Ruby has never felt more like a character from her sister’s book of fairy tales.

Tam sees beyond Ruby’s job and ratty clothes, and sweeps her off her feet, treating her like a real princess, but Ruby is sure this beautiful boy is too good to be true. And as one tragedy after another befalls Ruby and her family, Ruby painfully learns that magic is all too real, and it always comes with a price.' - Goodreads

Slumber is one of the strangest - in a good way! - books I've read involving the Fae in a long time. Ruby lives with her mother and baby sister in a trailer after running away from her mom's abusive ex-boyfriend. They're poor, really poor. Ruby works, goes to high school and reads fairy tales to Shelly while her mom works all the hours possible. After finding her collapsed on the floor Ruby takes over one of her mom's cleaning jobs, Cottingley Heights, but Ruby has no idea how her life is about to change. After meeting the enigmatic Tam and his friends who live at Cottingley Ruby realizes that there is something different about them and she's right. Tam and his friends are fairies but not your pretty, sparkly winged full of joy type fairies... Tam, Violet and the rest are psychotic, drug addled, sex crazed fairies who like to play with people and think nothing of a hunt ending in murder. As Ruby slowly falls for Tam, her mother becomes seriously ill and the only obvious solution to avoid Shelly going into care is for her to live with a friend and for Ruby to stay at Cottingley. Slowly but surely she becomes immersed in the Fae world, not realizing that even a simple thing like drinking a cup of coffee is going to have far-reaching consequences.

Ruby is a great example of a strong female character, she puts her family first all the time and is quite willing to sacrifice herself if it means her sister & her mom will be okay. She doesn't fall head over heels in love with Tam, her feelings develop slowly and she is ultimately horrified to discover what Tam is, what she may become because of him. Tam was a difficult character to get to grips with, it was easy to like him at the beginning before you knew what was going on and how he was manipulating Ruby by offering her what he thought she wanted but then he also tried to warn Ruby about what was happening and told her to stay away. Good guy or bad guy, Tam is probably both but you can't say the same for the rest of the fairies whose main occupations seemed to be orgies, drug-taking and murder particularly Violet who is jealous of Ruby's relationship with Tam. Violet doesn't bat an eyelid at the prospect of murder to get what she wants. I thought all the characters were well written, the storyline was great but I wanted more, especially from that ending! I've been able to find no information on whether this is the start of a series and it needs to be, the way the last chapter just finished! Not even a proper epilogue and now I'm left hanging... Ms Blake, please write more tales of Ruby and/or Tam, I am desperate to know more.