#203 Book Review: Wildlife

Wildlife
Release Date: 1 June 2013
Author: Fiona Wood
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Source: Publisher for Review
Format: Paperback
Where to Buy:  Fishpond | Booktopia
More Info: Goodreads

Summary:

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.

Cover:
So cute! I love how the title of the book is written like the clouds, the blue sky and the two pairs of shoes in the bottom of the cover. It's simplistic but adorable!

Story:

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

While I haven't read Fiona Wood's Six Impossible Things, I adored Wildlife, the companion to Six Impossible Things. In Wildlife, we meet Sibylla, a girl who before going to the outdoor education program, managed to do two 'incredible' things; getting her face plastered on a huge billboard and kissing the most popular guy in her school!

Wildlife ventures around the themes of friendship, love and grief. Fiona Wood's writing is witty, beautiful and tackles the life of teenagers excellently. The setting is perfect to explore the characters and I love how Fiona Wood can capture the emotions of her characters so well. The book is written from dual POVs of Sybilla and Lou. Since I haven't read Six Impossible Things, I had no idea who Lou is or what she is like in the book but in this book, Lou becomes friends with Sybilla and their friendship is sweet and beautiful. Also, I can't help but smile when I noticed that Fiona Wood made a reference to Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi!

Characters:
I think this is the strongest element of the book, the way Fiona Wood explores the characters, revealing the layers of their emotions and feelings one by one. In the beginning of the book, we know that Lou is grieving. As a way to handle her griefs, she writes journal entries and reading her journal entries broke my heart. They are honest, filled with grief but also show a process of Lou healing her heart. In some of her journal entries, she also talks about her friends (and if I'm not mistaken, they are the main characters in Six Impossible Things) I really liked Lou's character and how she blends in with Sibylla and her friends later on. Sibylla is also an enjoyable character to read about, from the awkward moments she had with the boy she likes, her witty-bantering with Michael, her friend, and her cute conversations with Lou. Sibylla's friend, Holly, isn't a particularly likeable character to me but I do like her friendship with Sibylla. Michael, on the other hand, is such a cute nerdy boy! I love his new-found friendship with Lou and his long friendship with Sibylla. Ben is an alright character, he can be annoying at times but his moments with Lou are quite adorable.

Overall:
Do you ever think of the wildlife as a place to heal your wounds, to find out who you are and to form relationships and friendships with people? Wildlife is a great novel which ventures around these themes with realistic characters who you can't help but adore and love. If you love contemporary books with beautiful and realistic story of friendship and love, then you definitely don't want to miss out reading Wildlife!

4 Forget-Me-Not flowers for Wildlife!

Thank you Pan Macmillan Australia for the review copy!