ARC Review: Wild and Wicked Things

Finally, it’s almost time for one of our most anticipated books of the year to be out in the world! The lesbian witchy retelling of The Great Gatsby that exceeds every expectation anyone had about it! Adult fantasy keeps gifting us in the most surprising of ways.

You could still preorder a copy of Wild and Wicked Things, and in the meantime don’t forget to follow Fran on twitter, if you’re not already!

Related: interview with Fran & most anticipated LGBT releases of 2022

In the aftermath of World War I, a naive woman is swept into a glittering world filled with dark magic, romance, and murder in this lush and decadent debut.

On Crow Island, people whisper, real magic lurks just below the surface. 

Neither real magic nor faux magic interests Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s only on the island to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one. 

Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the biggest one may be her enigmatic new neighbor. 

Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. And when Annie witnesses a confrontation between Bea and Emmeline at one of the island’s extravagant parties, she is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.

Wild and Wicked Things

Francesca May

Goodreads

Rep: lesbian mc, nonbinary lesbian mc, bi side character
CWs: domestic violence, child abuse, magic requiring self harm, blood
Release: 29th March 2022

Charlotte’s Review

Wild and Wicked Things achieves what I expected to be the impossible: it made me love something Great Gatsby-adjacent. I am as surprised as you are.

Alright, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised, given that Francesca May is one of my favourite authors. If anyone could overcome my decade-strong aversion to Gatsby it would be her. And, lo and behold, she did!

Wild and Wicked Things is like what would happen if you took Gatsby, added lesbian witches, and then killed a certain character off halfway through. Not telling who that character is, although you can probably make a fair guess. And for these very reasons, it’s entirely glorious.

Every time I’ve reviewed a book by May in the past, I’ve mentioned just how good her characterisations are, and that is so very true of this book as well. Obviously, my first thought about this book is women—, but my second and third are just how rounded and complex these women are. You cannot sum them up in a few sentences because they are so much more than all that. I think that’s the biggest strength of May—the characters not only leap off the page, but they feel so very real, so very human, messy and flawed but full of love. And this is all established seamlessly with the rest of the narrative.

You can tell this is all developed with such care, crafted so well within the rest of the book that you barely clock this as information to absorb. The same goes for the worldbuilding. All of it comes together so neatly that you wonder how you never knew it before. The Gatsby crossed with Practical Magic comparison is apt, but this is a book that transcends those comps too. Frankly, I think we should all start referring to Gatsby as Wild and Wicked Things but without the magic, because this book so surpasses Gatsby that, honestly, I think we should just forget that book exists. (I’m not biased at all…)

And then we get to the relationships. If you’ve ever wanted to feel so entirely feral over a sapphic relationship, this is the book for you. I cannot put into words just how much Annie and Emmeline made me feel. You know when something in a book just makes you want to scream into a pillow? That’s their entire relationship to me. That feeling but constant. Every minute they’re on page, that.

One last thing then: what this book did very well was take the bare bones of Gatsby and make it into something new. Let me make this comparison with another retelling of it, The Chosen and the Beautiful. Where that keeps very close to the book, even using dialogue and phrases lifted straight from the pages of it (to its detriment for me), this one departs from it around halfway through, and isn’t tracking nearly so close for the first half anyway. That, to me, is how you do a good retelling. You make it into something new.

So, if I haven’t convinced you to read this book with this review, then I have utterly failed in my job. I may as well just throw in the towel now. This has to be one of the best books of 2022, and if you can’t see that, sorry but there’s little hope for you.

Anna’s Review

Imagine The Great Gatsby, but if Gatsby was a nonbinary lesbian blood witch. That single sentence alone should be enough to convince all the people with good taste to read Wild and Wicked Things, but I can and will say more! 

Wild and Wicked Things is very much an adult book, despite the description that seems very in vogue for the current young adult landscape. This isn’t an admonishment of any kind, though, for neither of the literature groups. It’s simply something to be taken into account, when managing your reading expectations. Wild and Wicked Things is a slow book, it takes time to develop the world, the characters, it pushes the plot forward in small steps. And it’s very dark and bloody (figuratively and literally). 

The slowness of the book works like a charm (no pun intended), because of May’s writing style. There’s no other word to describe it but lush. It shines like a diamond, every sentence somehow more beautiful than the last. Some descriptions feel truly otherworldly, while others forcefully bring you to the pain & dirt of everyday life. The stylistic choices help create the atmosphere of the scenes themselves. 

And given that this is an adult novel, you as the reader have to piece together the world and its rules yourself. You’re given some pieces of information here and there, but only in the way that is natural to the characters existing in said world. No conversations about things all parties already know about, no infodumping in the narrative. No holding your hand. All is as it’s supposed to be in a fantasy book.

The greatest achievement of Wild and Wicked Things are the characters, though. Some of them are terribly selfish, some of them will give all of themselves for others, and all of them are so very, very human. They grow throughout the story, as well, especially Annie. Her journey into confidence, into finding a goal in life, mirrors her lesbian awakening. It’s absolutely spectacular. 

Wild and Wicked Things is the kind of book to make you feel things. It’s full to the brim with magic, and yearning, and secrets… It’s not an easy to forget story, instead one that will find a place in your heart, like the characters within who carved a space for themselves in the world with blood & tears & love.

So, have we convinced you that you want to read this book?