One of My ALL TIME Favorites
I received Tithe as a gift soon after its publication and was immediately sucked in. Many books are hard to get into, with a lot of back story clumped at the beginning - Tithe is not one of them. There is plenty of action, emotion, danger and intrigue to keep you reading and guessing. The humans are real, the faeries are fantastic, and Black refuses to paint an unrealistic picture of either the human or faerie realms for the sake of keeping her YA literature innocent and candy coated. This is YA literature that respects its readers' intelligence, and we need more of it.

I love the way Black blends natural teenage emotion (feeling alienated, longing for the attention of the cool guy, struggling to keep your identity while fitting in SOMEWHERE) with grander, more pressing issues (love and hate, good and evil, war and resolution).

Tithe is urban fantasy at its best: enough of the real world to believe it, enough of the Faerie world to make you sad to leave it.

Black's writing makes me feel torn between harboring the book like a sacred secret, and shouting of its grandiosity to everyone I meet. Inevitably I settle for something in between, tolling its virtues to those who are worthy of receiving it.

Torn
I find it rather hard to choose what type of review I would like to write. Positive or negative. I suppose mine will be a bit of both.
On the one hand, I enjoyed the plot of this story and felt that is was original. The main character and narrator is certainly not like myself or any other heroine I have read about. She is strong and cunning, for that I am greatful. On the other hand, I could not identify with her in any real way. She was kind of trashy. Certainly not anyone I would look up to or befriend. Also, I found the writing style hard to enjoy. Lastly, I found the supposed love story with Roibin hard to swallow. It wasn't very believable and I felt that he was more in love with the Seelie Queen.
All in all, I did enjoy the story, but it certainly did not live up to the hype.

Amazing book, one of my favorites!
I absolutely love this book. I've read it about 4398403 bajillion times. I think that it is very well written, Holly Black is so creative. I have to admit that I fell in love with Roiben. I strongly recommend reading this book!

The good, the bad and the ugly
I'm going to start with the positives. First, the book has an interesting premise. It also has diverse characters, including a homosexual. I don't find the presence of homosexual characters inappropriate in young adult fiction because some young adults are gay and as entitled to representation in teen fiction. And finally, the book will draw you in if you can get past some of the more unexpected and oft-putting elements.

Now for the bad: Black tries way too hard to make her story hip and relevant, and in doing so, insults the intelligence of young readers. Before I said that a strength of the book was the diversity of the characters. Sadly, that ends once they open their mouths. Not all teenagers are foul-mouthed, sex-crazed brats contrary to what some earlier reviews might suggest.

The consistently irresponsible behavior of the characters also undermines the author's attempts of horror. Under normal circumstances the faeries might be terrifying but the human characters are so self-destructive, it almost doesn't matter whether they meet their death at the hands of a faerie or via STD or drug overdose.

Why should I be any more scared for characters after finding out faeries might hurt them when they are already doing so much to hurt themselves?

The book might have worked better had Black more effectively used the faerie world as a parable for real world concerns a la Christopher Pike or more recently Joss Wheden. Instead she simply throws in as much adult content as she can in an effort to woe immature, misguided readers whether it furthers the plot, or not.

That said, there really is a decent story in there somewhere once Black gets past the trappings of trying too hard to reach her audience. I just wonder how many readers she lost in the meantime.

Me, I'm giving her another chance. Hopefully Ironside will have a little more depth.

Trash
This book is total trash. Warning! It does not belong in your childs hands. I could not finish reading it, because it was totally not what I would want my students in high school to read. Lots of bad language. Even the name of the band that the main character's mother was in was filth. Of course I know this will excite some people. A total waist of money. This book doesn't even warrant the star I had to give it.