Author: Fiona Wood
Genre: Young Adult/Adult Crossover fiction
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication Date: 1st June 2013
ISBN: 9781742612317
Stand alone or series: Stand Alone
Pages: 384 pages
Book Received from: Pan Macmillan (Publisher)
First Lines: In the holidays before the dreaded term at my school's outdoor education campus two things out of the ordinary happened. A picture of me was plastered all over a twenty-metre bill board at St Kilda junction. And I kissed Ben Capaldi.
Synopsis: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.
My Thoughts:
I was stoked to be sent another book by Fiona Wood. I had read Six Impossible things a couple of months ago and really enjoyed this, and when in the synopsis it had one of the characters from her other book I was pretty happy. The only prob was, after reading one or two chapters, I couldn't actually remember Lou from the first book. In the end I flicked through Six Impossible Things and had an "Oh that's right" moment when I found that Lou was Fred's girlfriend. Fred, who happened to be Dan's (The main character) best friend. I can honestly say Lou didn't stand out as much as I thought in that first book. But in Wildlife we get to see Lou as well as the other main character, Sibylla up close and personal.
I did find it hard to begin with, to tell the difference between both characters. Yes, they lived different lives but every now and then I'd get jumbled up and have to flick back through the previous chapter to find either the trailing ants, or the wings to remember who did what. It gets easier as the novel goes along but at the beginning it was confusing.
That said I did really enjoy reading Wildlife. Both girls are thrown into camp for a whole term, learning survival skills, and things nature related, as well of some of their curriculum from school. I kind of wished to some degree that our school had done that for us. It sure would have made things interesting.
I really felt for Lou. Her loss is really felt throughout each chapter especially when she would refer back to things that happened in the past. I also liked that she was quiet and didn't follow in the steps of the so called popular girls in the cabins.
I also could relate to Sibylla quite alot too. She reminded me alot of how I used to deal with things at school. Go with the flow, and ignore the two faced girls who would pretend to be your friends.
By the end of Wildlife I wished there was more to read. To find out anything more about these two girls. I really didn't want the story to end. The two lines at the front "Lose yourself. Find yourself." reallly rung true for this and I look forward to reading more of what Fiona Wood has in store for us. Bring it on!
