Fairy Bad Day by Amanda Ashby

Genre: Fantasy
Rating: **
Pages: 336
Emma was born to kill dragons. After all, her mother was one of the world's greatest dragon slayers before she died. Instead, Burtonwood Academy assigns her to be the first fairy slayer in history. Why would anybody want to slay stupid creatures no taller than ten inches? They're harmless, even if they are obnoxious and sarcastic with no fashion sense whatsoever.
Her rightful position of dragon slayer is taken by Curtis Green. He may be cute, but he has three years less slaying experience than Emma.
As if things couldn't get any worse, a giantic killer fairy keeps appearing on campus. Emma's the only one who can see it and it's looking more and more like there's no way to kill the thing. But there may be a way to defeat it...but only with some help from Curtis.
I found the fairy slaying idea extremely original and the romance extremely predictable. A perfectly cute boy, a personal grudge against him, and they're forced to work together. That sounds slightly familiar. Let me guess, are they going to kiss on the last page?
And then there's the writing style. Lots of showing instead of telling. The characters speak in a very expository manner, summing up their actions in recent pages or recents chapters and describing things they already know about. Not to mention the overuse of italics whenever they're saying anything remotely important. Especially in the last line of paragraphs.
Towards the beginning, Emma annoyed me because all she ever did was complain to the principal. Complain about not slaying dragons.  Complain about Curtis. Complain about how he's not doing anything to stop the invisible fairy. Things get a lot better once she starts acting on her own.
Later on, there's this dramatic scene where somebody's about to have his throat slit, but there's plenty of time for questions and answers and planning and insults while Emma moves to stop him. Either that claw is moving really slowly, or Emma's supernatural slayer abilities have blessed her with the gift to talk and lightning speed and still be understood.
There are also a few mild but unexpected twists towards the end, adding a satisfying element of drama to the story, though nothing made my heart beat fast.  I do love it when a book can do that. Fairy Bad Day is a quick, light, enjoyable read, even if the title is slightly corny.