Beginning with one of the funniest opening sequences I’ve read, and continuing through the end, this tale of an apprentice tooth fairy gave me many laughs. Better yet, it features an endearing heroine, an interesting hero, and an intriguing world. Billed as the first of the author’s Nether-Netherland series, I hope that there are more to come. Love, Lust, & Pixie Dust was fun.

Daisy le Fey has given up her life as a scientist in Nether-Netherland, and signed on as an apprentice tooth fairy. But her first assignment goes seriously wrong. Daisy’s supposed to be in an eight-year old’s bedroom to recover his tooth. Instead, she’s landed in the tent of a gorgeous man who’s clearly not the eight-year old.

Trevor, a paleo-anthropology instructor at a Midwest college, wakes up from a sound sleep in a tent in Costa Rica to discover Daisy. Trevor’s certain she’s not one of his students, as they’re all covered in mud and look nothing like this woman, who resembles a Victoria’s Secret model, right down to the skimpy outfit she’s wearing and the odd wings on her back. When she starts asking for a tooth and tells him she’s a tooth fairy, Trevor decides that while Daisy is delectable, she has to be nuts.

Daisy manages to abscond with some of the teeth Trevor and his students unearthed in Costa Rica, but soon gets into trouble with the tooth fairy bureaucracy for fraud. Yes, if you can’t tell by now, this is not an angst-filled fantasy. Daisy and Trevor have many humorous escapades. And while some of the beings in Nether-Netherland are scary, they’re mostly pretty funny.

Despite her looks, Daisy is no dummy; she was a brilliant scientist, but in Nether-Netherland, scientists are looked at as menial labor, because everyone else can do the same things with the flick of a wrist or a spell. Despite the fact that her mother is a fairy godmother and her father is a guardian angel, the magic gene seems to have passed Daisy by.

Daisy invents “magical” wands and other tools to do the “magic” everyone else in Nether-Netherland takes for granted, but her magical inventions leave a lot to be desired. Daisy repeatedly turns a whole host of things – including one of Trevor’s students – into pumpkins.

Trevor had troubles of his own. He’s competing for one tenure spot in his department with a slimy colleague who’ll stop at nothing to get the position.

There’s more than a strong physical chemistry between Trevor and Daisy. Trevor comes to respect Daisy’s mind, and Daisy is awed by some of the things in Trevor’s lab. And she’s amazed when Trevor takes her to the school library; as a reader, she’s frustrated by the notion that in Nether-Netherland everyone just conjures up what they want to read. Daisy wants to see and touch books. Trevor likes the scientist part of Daisy, something no one in Nether-Netherland appreciates.

I have some quibbles with the book. There’s some silly language such as “trembling breasts.” And the fact that Trevor has a PhD in anthropology, specializes in Central America, but doesn’t speak Spanish seems far-fetched to me. And while Daisy and Trevor are hot for each other, the first sex scene feels rather mechanical, almost like an instruction booklet to put this hand here and this leg there.

Despite those problems, I really had fun reading this book. I like Trevor and Daisy, found some of the inhabitants of Nether-Netherland, such as her parents and her best friend Maeve, the talking horse, fascinating, and would love to visit their world again.