Wild and Wicked Things Review

 ‘Wild and Wicked Things’ is imagined as a sapphic retelling of ‘The Great Gatsby’ , set in the jazz age with a sprinkle of magic and historical fiction. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, while  ‘The Great Gatsby’ will remain etched into the American and world literature, not because of the glitz and glam of the age, but because of the criticism of it, I am afraid that ‘Wild and Wicked Things’ has not even gotten close to the level needed for that kind of veneration.

The story follows Annie, a naive young woman, who came to Crow Island, a place filled with magic and mystery to settle her father’s estate. However, as she moves about, she gets intertwined with the forbidden magic and meets Emeline, the local witch. This, in combination with the idea that all of this is set post WWI in which magic is very much real but forbidden drew my attention. I really wanted to like it, but the author did so little in so many pages I found myself skimming through so many pages of Annie’s quite obvious inner world. There are only so many times she could explain to us how she feels about another woman.

None of the elements of the story, except the overall premise was well executed in this story. First of all, the island had so much potential and the influence of ‘The Great Gatsby’ is obvious. The isolated place full of mystical men and women breaking the law because of their mysterious connection to the other worldly, you can’t really go wrong with that. However, somehow, the author of ‘Wild and Wicked Things’ did. Except for one info dump and constant mention of the number of crows (hence the name) as an ominous but overdone reminder, we don’t really learn much about this place. I struggled to imagine how this should all look like, and feel. Similarly, there are three main houses in the story- Annie’s father’s house, the cottage she rents and Emelline’s house. While most of the plot happens in these three places and the beach close to the cottage and the house, I simply could not imagine how any of them look. The author seemingly kept inventing rooms in the house as it suited her, making it even more confusing. 

The pacing was uneven throughout the story and the big reveal of Emelline’s story was incredibly unsatisfactory and dare I say cliche? There was also nothing particularly riveting about it and I have read that plot so many times, depicted in better ways. Perhaps if Emelline was not presented as a powerful witch, but then spent the whole novel doing everything but, I would find it in my heart to care, but at the point this was revealed, I was past the point of caring.

To be honest, I am not completely sure I understood the mechanics of the magic in the story. Much like with the lore of the place, the author spent little to no time actually explaining the logic of the magic in this book. We just have Emelline talking about it, assuming everyone is on the same page about it, which was not the case. It does pull a bit from Wicca, but not enough to rely on that tradition to understand ‘Wild and Wicked Things’. I am still not sure what exactly happened at the end, as it was not well explained and it felt very random and sudden and the readers were expected to just understand it.

The pacing also felt off throughout the novel. Instead of actually doing world building, lore or even character building, the author spent too much time in Annie’s head, spelling out for the readers how she feels at any given moment, even when it was painfully obvious. Instead of giving her any real development, we got a shortcut by her saying ‘the old Annie would…but the new me would…’. This was such lazy writing and made Annie’s voice quite annoying actually. This is a dual POV where Annie and Emelline get their narrations. However, they are so similar that it felt pointless to do so. They are constantly presented as so different, but the author did not do enough on developing their narrative voices to justify having this approach. If they truly were different, this would be appreciated, but there is not enough.

Their romance also felt underserved, as it was equally telephoned in but also sudden. Because they are both so wooden and quite frankly uninteresting characters, I found their interactions such as well. The repetitiveness of the novel rubbed on their relationship as well. Lesbians deserve better than whatever was offered here. 

Finally, this book was a huge let down for me. At first, the atmosphere drew me in, but the lackluster pacing, underdeveloped characters and lack of any world building or original and interesting lore were disappointing to say the least.  The comparisons to ‘the Great Gatsby’, arguably one of the best novels of the 20th century,  did it no favor.

Overall, all of this was done better in better novels and I did not enjoy any of the elements of this novel. I rated it ⅖.