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A review by foxmoon
What Should Be Wild by Julia Fine
4.0
three and a half stars.
What Should Be Wild started out as the contemporary gothic fairytale of my dreams. We are transported to a dark world, in which a woman's corpse may be kept alive to incubate an unborn child and where that child's father views her as somewhat of a scientific mystery and keeps her locked away in a mansion to study. This is because Maisie, the child and protagonist of the novel, possesses a sort of super power in which she will kill anything that her skin comes in contact with.
We follow Maisie through her childhood, the peculiar childhood of a captured princess and her overprotective father. The world they inhabit is fascinating, a little bit scary, and shaped by foreboding stories and folklore. The first part of the book which consists of this dreamlike world-building is a delight. Maisie is a precocious but obedient child, and the reader learns along with her, just as eagerly as she does.
It is only when Maisie becomes a young woman and a few new characters are introduced that the novel loses its enchantment. These are the stereotypical love interests (the handsome rogue and the good-hearted nerd), one of whom flattens the wonder in favor of formula. With these new characters, a small voyage of an adventure occurs but its conclusion, and the conclusion of the novel, is underwhelming and doesn't necessarily measure up to the robust lore established in the beginning of the story.
I loved the first part of the book and would have rated it five stars, but it took a turn and never recovered after the halfway mark.
What Should Be Wild started out as the contemporary gothic fairytale of my dreams. We are transported to a dark world, in which a woman's corpse may be kept alive to incubate an unborn child and where that child's father views her as somewhat of a scientific mystery and keeps her locked away in a mansion to study. This is because Maisie, the child and protagonist of the novel, possesses a sort of super power in which she will kill anything that her skin comes in contact with.
We follow Maisie through her childhood, the peculiar childhood of a captured princess and her overprotective father. The world they inhabit is fascinating, a little bit scary, and shaped by foreboding stories and folklore. The first part of the book which consists of this dreamlike world-building is a delight. Maisie is a precocious but obedient child, and the reader learns along with her, just as eagerly as she does.
It is only when Maisie becomes a young woman and a few new characters are introduced that the novel loses its enchantment. These are the stereotypical love interests (the handsome rogue and the good-hearted nerd), one of whom
Spoiler
is very obviously evil andI loved the first part of the book and would have rated it five stars, but it took a turn and never recovered after the halfway mark.