Into the Wild Review

Title: Into the Wild
Author: Sarah Beth Durst
Publisher: Razorbill
Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tale

Blurb: (from goodreads) Twelve-year-old Julie has grown up hearing about the dangerous world of fairy tales, The Wild, from which her mother, Rapunzel, escaped.


Now The Wild wants its characters back. Julie comes home from school to find her mother gone and a deep, dark forest swallowing her hometown. Julie must fight wicked witches, avoid glass slippers and fairy godmothers, fly griffins, and outwit ogres in order to rescue her mom and save her Massachusetts town from becoming a fairy-tale kingdom.

Sarah Beth Durst weaves a postmodern fairy tale that's fresh, funny, and sweetly poignant.



Me: An interesting take on fairy tale retellings that was oddly captivating.

The Ups: I loved the concept of the Wild, first of all. I think it was described in a very strange way so that everyone who read it perceived it a bit differently. I personally saw it as a growing vine that just swept up everything in its path, and in the middle of it would be the forest, and all the stories.
Basically, the concept of these fairytale retellings is that the Wild will find random people to replace parts in stories, and when their story ends, it starts over again. When it does so, it erases the person's memory, therefore they succumb to the Wild's power. 
I found that concept fascinating. There is just an eerie feel about having to be in the same story, again and again, and to never remember. And I genuinely was sucked into the book near the end, when the true horror of the Wild kind of came to life. I normally don't enjoy fairytale retellings, but in this one, I grew to genuinely feel for the characters.

The Downs: Before anything else, it was so slow in the beginning. There was nothing interesting, nothing to keep me reading, and at first I regarded the Wild as a bit immature and stupid, not something that I truly felt could put people in danger. It took a long time to get into the book, but when I did, it started getting interesting.
Also, I feel like the book was a bit childish. Which can be good as a nice breath of fresh air, but there were some moments in the book that I felt would not have been in other young adult books. 

Overall: A very interesting way of putting a spin on your average fairytale, but drags on a bit in the beginning. 

Rating: 3 kisses! 



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