Wild and Wicked Things Book Review

Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May

*This review contains spoilers*

*Content Warning: This review mentions r*pe* 

Summary & Review 

I want to preface by saying that when I listened to this on audio, I had absolutely no idea that this was loosely inspired by the Great Gatsby and reimagined as a sapphic historical dark fantasy. (Actually, once you turn Gatsby into a sapphic historical dark fantasy, how inspired by Gatsby can it really still be?) But, I think not knowing that actually allowed me to enjoy the story more. Had I known that this was supposed to be inspired by Gatsby, I would have been a lot more critical of the plot, the characters, the general direction of the story, etc. Not knowing just simply allowed me to appreciate this story for what it is on its own. 

I don’t have terribly a lot to say about this book. There was nothing terribly bad about it that I want to rip apart, and there was also not a lot overly impressive that I want to gush about either. I really feel this book was mostly just an average read. Entertaining, but that’s about it. 

I really enjoyed the dark fantasy element, especially over a historical fiction backdrop. Though there were places where the world building could have been better. As far as the characters go, I listened to this book on audio, and a different narrator’s voice was used for each character’s dialogue, so I think that really helped bring them off the page and feel a bit more dynamic. 

I loved the author’s choice to make the main romance sapphic, but not to use it as an excuse to constantly focus on homophobia, but at the same time she doesn’t fall into the pitfall of acting like homophobia didn’t exist. This is a huge pitfall for a lot of authors who want to include LGBTQ characters and romances in their stories, and even queer authors can’t always find the perfect balance. If you focus too much on the homophobia and struggles that LGBTQ folk (like myself) face, then sometimes it just starts to feel gratuitous and in poor taste, and it will turn a lot of readers off because they’ll feel like the author is just enjoying writing about queer pain or glorifying it. However, if you include none at all and remove any inkling of queerphobia or the trauma of its impact from the story, it feels insensitive, like the author is downplaying the real history and experiences of queer folk. There’s a line and a balance to handling it, and not all writers do it well. I feel that May handles this aspect of the story well. She acknowledges queer history without making everything about queer trauma. It’s refreshing. 

That being said, while May handled the context of historical queerness well, the romance between the two women is lacking in its development. The romance is between the two women—Annie and Emmeline. Annie comes across to me very passive, quiet, introverted, and unsure of herself (although this could just be the way the audiobook narrator portrayed her). She is easily ensnared by Emmeline, who is confident, extroverted, commanding, alluring, etc. It’s easy to see how and why Annie was ensnared by her, and I did enjoy watching her come to terms with being attracted to another woman. The problem, though, is that it feels one sided. The implications that Emmeline reciprocated her feelings feel quite hollow. Not to say that a confident, self-assure extrovert can’t fall for a shy, quiet introvert. But the author does need to show how and why—what about these opposites is attracting? For Annie, it’s obvious, Emmeline gives her the chance to explore her true self. For Emmeline though? I never really saw what she saw in Annie at any point. 

The biggest flaw in the novel overall isn’t the romance though (I’ll take a cliche, non-fleshed out romance for the sake of sapphic representation in books)! The biggest problem was the climatic twist. During the time Annie spent on Crow Island (the story’s setting), she’s been trying to reconnect with an old friend named Bea. After some moderate build up and suspense, eventually we learn that Emmeline helped Bea use blood magic to put a spell on a guy named Arthur, who Bea was ‘in love’ (*cough* obsessed) with, and it basically turned him into a violent shell of a human being who was so desperately in love with Bea and had no choice in the matter. Now, obviously, this is a dark fantasy, so this type of plot line could be interesting, but what I didn’t like at all was the way that May uses it to portray Arthur as the bad guy and Bea like a victim. 

Don’t get me wrong, May made it clear that Arthur is a despicable human being—I guess she did that to try and evaporate any sympathy the reader might have for him and still root for our witchy gals in defeating him instead. But just because Arthur is horrible, doesn’t mean that Bea and Emmeline aren’t also horrible for what they did. When your victim is a bad person, it doesn’t make you less of a bad person for being a perpetrator. They cast a spell in him to manipulate him his feelings and force him to fall in love, and so I probably don’t need to explain the very rape-y vibes that this gives off. So yeah, May’s attempts at writing a dark fantasy fall flat by her failure to acknowledge the disputable horror of what Emmeline and Bea did and trying to convince her readers that their predatory shenanigans make them victims somehow. 

It’s a shame too because Emmeline was honestly the most interesting character up and until that point. While the flashback chapters didn’t always add a lot of depth to the plot, they were compelling in showing how Emmeline and her foster brother Nathan were raised (although be sure to check content warnings, because some of the chapters are more than just suggestive of what they endured). But Emmeline ends up being terrible, Nathan ended up being unceremoniously killed off, and Annie just never fully comes into her own as a character, so I’m ultimately left not really sure which characters I even like by the end. 

Criticisms of the characters here override my overall feelings for the story, however there are parts of the world building and the magic system that I liked. One thing in particular I enjoyed was the way May twisted up the “fated lovers” trope. 

There is a mystical bond that exists between Annie and Emmeline that has to do with their magic. By the end of the novel, the two do learn to control and wield that bond, and in turn become bound to each other’s magic even deeper. It does beg a certain question: are they soulmates? The answer: no! The narration later reveals that such bonds do exist between people with magic and can be extremely intimate—which is why usually married couples often choose to act on it—but that a sexual connection isn’t required to be there. They aren’t soulmates, they didn’t fall in love because the bond between them left them with no real choice. They are both witches who also happen to be gay and happen to fall in love. Surprisingly I like this a lot because it’s a good way of showing that there doesn’t need to always be a plot necessity for characters to be gay. Just like straight characters just being straight, even when it doesn’t matter to the plot. Emmeline and Annie don’t have to be gay or in love to wield their bonded magic, they just are. They simply exist, and that I really like. 

Final Thoughts

I’m hovering on the cusp of a rating for this book, but I think ultimately it will be a 2.5 out of 5. I really wanted to like it because it’s fantasy and it’s historical and it’s sapphic, and the aesthetic itself is immaculate. The problem is just the execution wasn’t what it needed to be.