Edition Read: Paperback Edition
Started: January 1, 2015
Finished: 23, 2015
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Finally! I've been dying to have this book finished from the moment I started my week #2 book, and it took me one day into week #4 to finally call it done.
This book ended up being slower going for me than I would have liked. Toward the middle I started getting bored, and I feel like it dragged on for 100 pages too long.
Wildwood is the story of Prue McKeel, a 12-year-old girl living in Portland with her parents and brother. In Prue's version of Portland, there is a forested area known as the Impassible Wilderness, and Prue was told to never go there, and for the most part she obliged.
That is, until the day her brother is taken by crows and led into the Impassible Wilderness, causing Prue to have to follow them. What results is Prue discovering the Impassible Wilderness is its own country known as Wildwood, and she will have to make friends with a menagerie of people and talking animals to save her brother.
Along the way, her friend Curtis follows her in and gets caught up in his own adventure, almost becoming the enemy.
Hoo boy. I figured since this was a middle grade level novel, I would breeze right through it since it's lower fare than I'm used to (Last time I read a middle grade novel was about 20 years ago). As it turns out, the pacing ended up being so slow for me that I had to put is down at times and read something else. I get that it's fantasy and fantasy books need world building, but there were parts later in the book (party scenes, downtime scenes, etc.) that needed to be cut short. It also took far too long to get to the final fight scenes, and I felt like the entire last chapter needed to go.
It you like fantasy, especially books like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Chronicles of Narnia, give this book a shot. I think the exposition of these kinds of books just makes them drag for me.
Started: January 1, 2015
Finished: 23, 2015
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Finally! I've been dying to have this book finished from the moment I started my week #2 book, and it took me one day into week #4 to finally call it done.
This book ended up being slower going for me than I would have liked. Toward the middle I started getting bored, and I feel like it dragged on for 100 pages too long.
Wildwood is the story of Prue McKeel, a 12-year-old girl living in Portland with her parents and brother. In Prue's version of Portland, there is a forested area known as the Impassible Wilderness, and Prue was told to never go there, and for the most part she obliged.
That is, until the day her brother is taken by crows and led into the Impassible Wilderness, causing Prue to have to follow them. What results is Prue discovering the Impassible Wilderness is its own country known as Wildwood, and she will have to make friends with a menagerie of people and talking animals to save her brother.
Along the way, her friend Curtis follows her in and gets caught up in his own adventure, almost becoming the enemy.
Hoo boy. I figured since this was a middle grade level novel, I would breeze right through it since it's lower fare than I'm used to (Last time I read a middle grade novel was about 20 years ago). As it turns out, the pacing ended up being so slow for me that I had to put is down at times and read something else. I get that it's fantasy and fantasy books need world building, but there were parts later in the book (party scenes, downtime scenes, etc.) that needed to be cut short. It also took far too long to get to the final fight scenes, and I felt like the entire last chapter needed to go.
It you like fantasy, especially books like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Chronicles of Narnia, give this book a shot. I think the exposition of these kinds of books just makes them drag for me.