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Wildlife (2000)

by Fiona Wood(Favorite Author)

3.86 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Pan Macmillan Australia

series

Six Impossible Things/Wildlife

review 1: This book came highly recommended by one of my teen colleagues who reads way more YA fiction than I do so I not only added it to my to-read list, I bumped it to the top. Which means that I read it with almost no ideas about the book except an expectation that it would be good. Which it was. Not amazing, top 10 of the year good, but good. It's told in alternating voices - one chapter by the self-possessed, recently popular Sibylla (called Sib) and the other by the awkward new girl and loner Lou (short for Louisa). The two meet when they end up in the same cabin for an outdoor semester in the woods. It's a nice setting for a teen book and allows for all the emotional upheaval of a summer camp story and the intellectual seriousness of a school story. Plus the students are the... morere for long enough and know that they will be going back to regular life together and so they have to figure out how to deal with each other beyond a simple summer adventure. There's real growth possible in this scenario. But what happens in the woods is fairly typical teen stuff. Sib is struggling to define her relationship to ultra-cool Ben Capaldi who has recently taken an interest in her, dealing with her mean-girl best friend Holly and trying to figure out how to fit her oldest friend Michael into her new popular-girl lifestyle. Lou is the careful observer, intentional outsider and moral center of the book. While Sib blunders around unaware of or unable to deal with the obvious social dynamics, Lou quietly lays them out for the reader and eventually the others. She does have a story of her own with a boyfriend who died tragically and a group of friends out of the country. And she is perhaps the more interesting character. I was disappointed that so much of the book revolves around Sibylla and that all the pivotal transitions are arranged around the relationship she has with Ben. Because the more interesting parts for me were the evolution of the friendships and Lou's own growth. Which are here in this book and make it a worthwhile read for sure.
review 2: I admit I read a lot of fantasy but this one is funny and quirky and covers the difficult topic of teen sexuality and peer pressure in a lighthearted and engaging way. I'm not always happy with how she manages but over the term at the camp she develops and learns who she really is and wo her real friends and boyfriends are. I would give this book to fans of Sarah Dessen, Laurie Halse Anderson, and John Green. less

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