Wildlife

by Dr Fiona Wood

[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.