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menshevixen's review against another edition
3.0
A strange, fluid read. Amazing transgression of boundaries between historic and original myth. Occasionally uncomfortably close to my particular real-world religious upbringing. Things I wish: that I cared about Matthew or was truly horrified by Rafe; that Maisie managed to make a female friend; that there was... any... hint of queerness in a very queer story.
tasharobinson's review against another edition
3.0
I can see the skill that went into this; the prose is very pretty and poetic, and the main character is drawn with impressive depth and detail. But I had the hardest time connecting to it! So much of the early going is spent on chapters introducing tragic dead female characters who wind up having virtually no impact on the plot, and even just disappearing in the end. And the center of the book is a big fantasy-mystery that just goes on and on and is finally explained at the very end, in a way that finally makes the pieces fall together, but didn't feel satisfying after hundreds of pages of "I don't know what this creature we're spending so much time with actually is, or how it's relevant to the story or the protagonist." I tend to think this would have worked a lot better if we'd known what the protagonist's doppleganger in the woods was to start with and could have understood the building threat and the establishing metaphor, instead of having so much of the book be about watching very detailed descriptions of things we aren't meant to understand or be able to place in reality.
mbellsamantha's review against another edition
4.0
I think I did this book a disservice by starting it while I was feeling slumpy and choosing to listen to the audiobook. I really enjoyed it, but I get the feeling I didn't appreciate it properly. A physical re-read someday is definitely in order.
arounds's review against another edition
3.0
There were moments of absolute beauty, gorgeous nods towards symbolic feminism and the strength of a woman even when she fears her own power in this world. Julia Fine weaves magic into every strand of her story, but I didn’t find myself committed to her characters and invested in their fates. Her storytelling, while beautifully written, often became disjointed with so many storylines going on at once. It felt like a series of six women’s novels crammed into one novel. I wanted to know until I felt more towards the main character, instead.
Still, I enjoyed the originality and the strong symbols that could be read beyond the words. Meanings within meanings that brought me to pause and nod as though I had solved something bigger, added to the magic. I love books that make me think and also have elements of the magical laced within. I would recommend it!
Still, I enjoyed the originality and the strong symbols that could be read beyond the words. Meanings within meanings that brought me to pause and nod as though I had solved something bigger, added to the magic. I love books that make me think and also have elements of the magical laced within. I would recommend it!
jharris2412's review against another edition
2.0
I wish I loved this book. The premise is so intriguing, but the story is so slow and I just could not finish.
amberlinn's review against another edition
3.0
This book was...a lot. At some point it took a turn and I think it got a little too heady for me.
The writing itself is beautiful, but the story felt to me like it was trying to be profound for profound’s sake and it lost its heart somewhere along the way.
The writing itself is beautiful, but the story felt to me like it was trying to be profound for profound’s sake and it lost its heart somewhere along the way.
mbennett78's review against another edition
It started out well and then got boring pretty quickly. The male characters were as interesting as old cardboard and the female characters were entirely too interested in them. Blah. I stopped caring about what would happen to them.
laurenexploresbooks's review
4.0
CW: Abduction, Murder, Torture, Death
What Should Be Wild is dark and compelling. The protagonist Maisie Cothay is cursed and can not touch anything with her bare hands without causing death. Maisie has been kept away in her family home with only her eccentric anthropologist father and a dog that is not impacted by her touch, and her brief knowledge of her family history for company. Maisie is trying to understand her place in a world that she has been forbidden from exploring and along the way learns about her own desires, fears, and understanding what it means to embrace the wildest parts of herself.
What Should Be Wild is dark and compelling. The protagonist Maisie Cothay is cursed and can not touch anything with her bare hands without causing death. Maisie has been kept away in her family home with only her eccentric anthropologist father and a dog that is not impacted by her touch, and her brief knowledge of her family history for company. Maisie is trying to understand her place in a world that she has been forbidden from exploring and along the way learns about her own desires, fears, and understanding what it means to embrace the wildest parts of herself.
gilmoreguide's review against another edition
2.0
(2.5)
The family of women in What Should Be Wild are cursed. They are the Blakelys and they go back generations to 400 A.D. when the first, the young Alys, is slain by conquerors. There are seven and range from Emma who is only five and was left in the forest to be cured of a birthmark on her face her mother found disfiguring to Helen who hung herself to avoid an arranged marriage to a much older man to Kathryn who enjoyed sex in a way that was completely unacceptable for the times. Each died in the forest near the family’s estate, making it a place avoided by the villagers. The forest is their haven, even if it is a boring one where nothing ages or dies.
Here, where time flows like honey, where their own deaths have died, the women need and they need, and it frightens them.
Into this sorrowful coven comes Maisie, born in modern times, who continued to gestate in her mother’s body after her mother died in an accident. Once she’s born, it’s immediately apparent that Maisie is different. Very different. Any touch from her skin to that of another living thing kills it. A second touch revives it. Her father, isolated on their estate looks at his daughter as a grand experiment, keeping her hands and limbs covered from birth and documenting her development as she comes to understand her power.
Maisie’s appearance is matched by the appearance, within the forest, of a young sleeping girl who seems to be Maisie’s doppelganger. Why she has appeared and what it means is something the forest women can’t figure out. At the same time, 16-year-old Maisie faces her own travails in the outside world when her power is discovered and believed to be the answer to a larger cosmological phenomenon.
All of this would work except there is a lot of stage to be set and author Julia Fine’s desire to explain every aspect of every scene causes the book to drag. What Should Be Wild is a grand and gruesome allegory. Each of the Blakely women is killed or escapes to the forest due to some societal imposition on her nature as a woman. Whether it is her looks, her sexuality, her value only as a piece of property, she is not accepted. She is feared. And while I appreciate inventive fiction that unpacks the historical subjugation of women, What Should be Wild becomes too heavy handed for me.
The family of women in What Should Be Wild are cursed. They are the Blakelys and they go back generations to 400 A.D. when the first, the young Alys, is slain by conquerors. There are seven and range from Emma who is only five and was left in the forest to be cured of a birthmark on her face her mother found disfiguring to Helen who hung herself to avoid an arranged marriage to a much older man to Kathryn who enjoyed sex in a way that was completely unacceptable for the times. Each died in the forest near the family’s estate, making it a place avoided by the villagers. The forest is their haven, even if it is a boring one where nothing ages or dies.
Here, where time flows like honey, where their own deaths have died, the women need and they need, and it frightens them.
Into this sorrowful coven comes Maisie, born in modern times, who continued to gestate in her mother’s body after her mother died in an accident. Once she’s born, it’s immediately apparent that Maisie is different. Very different. Any touch from her skin to that of another living thing kills it. A second touch revives it. Her father, isolated on their estate looks at his daughter as a grand experiment, keeping her hands and limbs covered from birth and documenting her development as she comes to understand her power.
Maisie’s appearance is matched by the appearance, within the forest, of a young sleeping girl who seems to be Maisie’s doppelganger. Why she has appeared and what it means is something the forest women can’t figure out. At the same time, 16-year-old Maisie faces her own travails in the outside world when her power is discovered and believed to be the answer to a larger cosmological phenomenon.
All of this would work except there is a lot of stage to be set and author Julia Fine’s desire to explain every aspect of every scene causes the book to drag. What Should Be Wild is a grand and gruesome allegory. Each of the Blakely women is killed or escapes to the forest due to some societal imposition on her nature as a woman. Whether it is her looks, her sexuality, her value only as a piece of property, she is not accepted. She is feared. And while I appreciate inventive fiction that unpacks the historical subjugation of women, What Should be Wild becomes too heavy handed for me.