Item: The Wilderwomen
Rating: 3.00
Author: quirkycat

by Ruth Emmie Lang

Five years ago, Nora Wilder disappeared. The older of her two daughters, Zadie, should have seen it coming, because she can literally see things coming. But not even her psychic abilities were able to prevent their mother from vanishing one morning.

Zadie's estranged younger sister, Finn, can't see into the future, but she has an uncannily good memory, so good that she remembers not only her own memories, but the echoes of memories other people have left behind. On the afternoon of her graduation party, Finn is seized by an "echo" more powerful than anything she's experienced before: a woman singing a song she recognizes, a song about a bird...

When Finn wakes up alone in an aviary with no idea of how she got there, she realizes who the memory belongs to: Nora.

Now, it's up to Finn to convince her sister that not only is their mom still out there, but that she wants to be found. Against Zadie's better judgement, she and Finn hit the highway, using Finn's echoes to retrace Nora's footsteps and uncover the answer to the question that has been haunting them for years: Why did she leave?

But the more time Finn spends in their mother's past, the harder it is for her to return to the present, to return to herself. As Zadie feels her sister start to slip away, she will have to decide what lengths she is willing to go to to find their mother, knowing that if she chooses wrong, she could lose them both for good.

Book Summary:

All Nora Wilder wanted to do was fly away. And then, one day, she disappeared. Her elder daughter, Zadie, always felt like she should have seen this coming. Literally – that's her gift, to see glimpses into the future.

Zadie's little sister has a different gift – to catch echoes of memories. This gift is about to drag both sisters on an adventure. If they're lucky, they can chase the trail of their mother's memories and finally find out what happened to her.

My Review:

Okay, so I absolutely fell in love with Ruth Emmie Lang's writing in Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, so I was expecting to love The Wilderwomen with all of my heart. Sadly, that didn't happen – though it wasn't a bad read, so at least there's that.

To be clear: the core of this book has SO much potential. I just struggled to connect with it. That honestly may have been on me, as I've been going through some stuff at the moment. It's hard to tell sometimes, you know? So I want to clarify any potential issues or biases.

The smaller magic of this world is fascinating, and I would love to see Ruth Emmie Lang continue to explore this concept further. Maybe not following the same family, but I digress. She does such a good job of taking something so relatively simple and stretching it to new proportions.

Highlights:
Magic
Paranormal
Magical Thriller

Trigger Warnings:
Disappearance

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The Wilderwomen

by Ruth Emmie Lang

Reviewed by Quirky Cat on Jan 1, 2023

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