Nancy Werlin's "Impossible"--another modern fairy tale--was actually pretty good. It had more of a bite to it than the average YA fairy story, though it ended up going soft at the end. I remember thinking that while the story was interesting enough, Werlin's writing was a little awkward. She encounters the same issues with "Extraordinary", though without "Impossible"'s eye-catching premise.

At the end of the day, "Extraordinary" is the story of one average girl's journey to discovering that she is--gasp!--not so ordinary in more ways than one. She's essentially prepared for something--we don't know what--as a sort of fatted calf, watched for years by a faerie, "Mallory". (I hate that spelling of fairy, by the way. No matter how accurate it may or may not be.)

Here are the tale's good points:

Mallory ends up being kind of sucky at her job--too attached to the humans and all that--so her brother Ryland is sent in to finish the job. Ryland's relationship with Phoebe is highly abusive, and Werlin doesn't try to cloak it with romance in the least. In fact, the story is much more about Mallory and Phoebe's relationship than anything else. Which is GREAT. Lady friendships for the win! However, the whole thing is almost undone by a tacked-on love interest who had all of ten pages' worth of "screentime".

Again, Mallory and Phoebe's relationship--and a cool backstory involving real-life figure Mayer Rothschild--is really the best part of the book. It's what you read for. Mallory herself is also really a good little scene-stealer.

As for everything else...

Phoebe is, unfortunately, quite an ordinary YA protagonist in that she's super special, but we never really know how. She becomes progressively more annoying as the book goes on, which is partially not her fault... But even when she's under Ryland's spell, I can't help but wonder if Werlin could have made her a bit more bearable.

Also, there's this really weird instance where she calls out a fairy tale for its anti-Semitic message, and... I just felt like Werlin was trying to make sure that she herself didn't get called out for anti-Semitism? It was totally out of place.

The dialogue was also really awkward a lot of the time, particularly when the fairies are conversing with one another/the girls are younger. It just doesn't it. And Phoebe does a lot of internalizing, which, realistic as it may be, doesn't make for a great book. There are hardly any interactions for us to see.

The Ryland/Phoebe relationship is another puzzle. I as a reader would have gotten why Phoebe stuck with him for as long as she did if there had been some tangible, non-magical reason for Phoebe to like him. There wasn't.

So: yeah, good effort here. However, it all comes across as a somewhat poorly-developed version of a good idea.