“‘My dear Prue, we are the inheritors of a wonderful world, a beautiful world, full of life and mystery, goodness and pain. But likewise we are the children of an indifferent universe. We break our own hearts imposing our moral order on what is, by nature, a wide web of chaos,'” (Meloy 380).
After her little brother Mac is abducted by a murder of crows, Prue is determined to get him back, even if it means venturing into the mysterious Wildwood that her parents have warned her from exploring. With the help of her classmate Curtis, the two kids enter a strange world filled with talking birds and coyotes, warring creatures, and a strange figure dark quest.
I’d heard of Wildwood for a long time and did confidently judge a book by it’s cover, because it is a gorgeous cover. I love Middle Grade Fantasy and portal fiction, and this seemed to check all the boxes of what I look for in that genre but it wasn’t until I learned that the film studio Laika (of Coraline and Paranorman fame) was adapting the book to film. Laika is one of my favourite animation studios, so I wanted to read Wildwood before the movie came out so that I could be ready.
But wow, this book was boring.
Prue is an okay enough protagonist thought honestly she’s pretty one-dimensional for most of the story considering she is on a quest to save her baby brother. The only point of her classmate Curtis being thrown into the story is to give a perspective into the villains camp, but even then Meloy could have just written from the villains perspective instead of adding an unnecessary character to give us this information. The world is too big, the cast of characters too large, the dialogue clunky and surprisingly adult. In fact, the novel as a whole felt like an adult talking down to it’s middle grade readers. And then the story itself is riddled with inconsistencies. Prue’s parents were trying to have Mac for a long time only for them to later say he came about unexpectantly (and the parents themselves are laughably uncaring). This was such a disappointing book.
I will say that the illustrations are gorgeous, and I hope that Ellis has a shop with some prints because I loved looking at her artwork. It was the one saving grace of this book.
If anyone can turn this story around it’s Laika, and I’m really banking on that because I’ll be disappointed if this movie is just as boring as it’s source material. All I know is that I will not be continuing with the Wild wood series.
Publication: August 30 2011
Publisher: Storytide
Pages: 541 pages (Hardcover)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Middle Grade, Fantasy
My Rating: ⛤⛤.5
Summary:
In Wildwood, Prue and her friend Curtis uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval—a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.
Sarah O'Connor 