Wildlife

by Dr Fiona Wood

Two sixteen-year-old girls in Australia come together at an outdoor semester of school, before university--one thinking about boys and growing up, the other about death and grief, but somehow they must help each other to find themselves.

• ISBN10: 031624208X
• ISBN13: 9780316242080
• Publish Date: 10 May 2016 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Poppy Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

This was such a beautiful story of growing up. At times it was kind of painful, but that is because it was so real. Lou and Michael were the highlight of this book for me. I loved Michael for all his honesty, his kind heart, and knowing himself. Lou broke my heart with each letter she wrote to her boyfriend. She shared so many of her most precious moments with us, and therefore, we had to share her pain.

What stood out for me, was the contrast of Lou's first love with Sib's first love. Wood showed us the good, the bad, the ugly with respect to those firsts that we experience when we are young, and I think it was good to show all sides.

I was really pleased with the changes Sibylla experienced at camp. She found her voice and herself. She made some decisions she regretted, but she owned them, and she learned from them. I was also happy that Lou experienced a breakthrough. I shed some tears when she shed that moment with us, and they were shed with a huge smile on my face.

[Bianca]

The only person you should be is yourself. You can’t control perception. All you can control is how you treat someone else.

— A raw and achingly real book about self-image, perception and fitting in. Also about the complexity of (female) friendships: that line between being friends and being "friends", envy/admiration vs. jealousy/hatred.

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

I was quite excited to pick up Wildlife, because as someone who loves nature, but hates being outdoors, reading about it is the next best thing! Plus it's set in Australia and I love learning more about this country! Unfortunately, this was so not for me. I could not connect with (or really, come to like) any of the characters, which is a huge problem for a character driven novel. There were points where I was super interested, but then it would lose me, pique my interest, lose my interest, and so on. Ultimately it just lost my interest, since I really didn't care what happened to Sybilla or Lou.

Wildlife had me extremely lost for the first 90 or so pages, because I didn't realize it was told in dual POV. There was no indication that it was both Sybilla and Lou telling their stories, or maybe I missed it. Even so, I thought it alternated between Sybilla's narration, and then her journal/letters. But then when the two girls meet at the school camp, I realized there were two completely separate narratives happening. Although, after that, the girls have the exact same voice, so the only way to know who was talking was that Lou's chapters start with a date since she's writing in her journal or writing letters to her dead boyfriend.

Once I got the POV straightened out, I discovered that I just could not connect with these girls. Sybilla is very wishy washy and a total pushover. She spends too much time over-thinking a situation and then just going with the flow, only to over-think that later. She's "going out" with Ben, whom she barely knows, after he kissed her a party. He only did so because she was on a billboard. I really could not care about this relationship, although it did bring up some of the issues that I was interested in later. As for Lou, I liked her better. I liked getting her perspective on Sybilla since her observations were much more interesting than getting them first hand from Sybilla. But her story of grief didn't really go anywhere. All of the focus was on Sybilla and her drama, which Lou got herself involved in.

The only thing I really liked about Wildlife was the completely screwed up dynamics between Sybilla and her "best friend" Holly. Holly is seriously one of the worst people ever. Everything has to be about her. She inserts herself into the middle of everything, and twists situations to make her look good and others look bad. And she's just mean. She is not a good friend to Sybilla no matter how you spin it, and being at this camp forced Sybilla to realize that. It was an absolute train-wreck, and I couldn't look away.

So I wouldn't say Wildlife was bad, but it certainly wasn't for me. While they're not my favorite, I do like character driven books, but if I don't like the characters there's not much to be done about that. Oh well.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.