Wildlife - Fiona Wood

by Unknown 12:30 AM 0 comments 3 star

Wildlife - 

Fiona Wood
Released: June 1, 2013
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Synopsis: Life? It’s simple: be true to yourself.
The tricky part is finding out exactly who you are…

In the holidays before the dreaded term at Crowthorne Grammar’s outdoor education camp two things out of the ordinary happened.
A picture of me was plastered all over a twenty-metre billboard.
And I kissed Ben Capaldi. 

Boarding for a term in the wilderness, sixteen-year-old Sibylla expects the gruesome outdoor education program – but friendship complications, and love that goes wrong? They’re extra-curricula.

Enter Lou from Six Impossible Things – the reluctant new girl for this term in the great outdoors. Fragile behind an implacable mask, she is grieving a death that occurred almost a year ago. Despite herself, Lou becomes intrigued by the unfolding drama between her housemates Sibylla and Holly, and has to decide whether to end her self-imposed detachment and join the fray. 

And as Sibylla confronts a tangle of betrayal, she needs to renegotiate everything she thought she knew about surviving in the wild.

A story about first love, friendship and NOT fitting in.

What I thought: Everyone has been raving about how good this book is, but unfortunately it fell short for me. Wildlife is about two different girls with very different problems, spending a school term on an outdoor education camp. Sibylla has to deal with problems like her bitchy best friend, and pressuring hot new boyfriend. Oh and the super smart but oh-so-weird friend, Michael. Seems very dramatic right? Or very pathetic. Lou however, is dealing with the loss of her boyfriend, and the separation from him and her other friends. While this book had a different setting, being in the outdoors of Australia, the problems they faced have been long overdone. I'm not saying I didn't like it, because there were plenty of moments when I did. But at the same time, those moments weren't enough to make Wildlife stand out from all the other contemporaries out there.

Although, now I am interested in giving Six Impossible Things a read!

The Good: Michael is my favourite character, and together with Lou they give the book something special. They are the reason I didn't give up reading this one.

The Bad: Sibylla frustrated me throughout the whole book. I know it's a story about growing and finding yourself, but the whole time I couldn't help thinking "Open your eyes! Find a backbone" and when it finally happened I couldn't even care anymore.

Rating:

3 bookstacks