Something Wild & Wonderful by Anita Kelly
Publication date: 7 March 2023 from Forever
I usually wait a day or two after reading a book to write a review of it, to give my brain time to work out my thoughts, but I literally finished reading Something Wild & Wonderful like three minutes ago and if I don’t get this overwhelming love out of my head right now I might literally explode. This book was so beautiful, y’all. Like, it wrapped me up in this cloud of happiness, even when there were tears streaming down my face (tissue count: 5).
Ben and Alexei are such beautiful characters, and I identified with parts of both of them so much it felt like I knew them deeply. Each of them has come to hike the Pacific Crest Trail as a means of processing grief and trauma. And while the 2600 miles of the PCT serves as the dazzling, treacherous, awe-inspiring background for most of this story, the focus here is on the characters. And I fell hard for all of them. Alexei and Ben entered into the ranks of those “If you could spend a day with any fictional character, who would it be?” people, because they just burrowed so far into my heart.
Because I always strive to keep my reviews spoiler-free, I really can’t talk about the part of this book that was mostly responsible for those five tissues I mentioned above. IYKYK. Sitting in my living room, NC headphones on to block out the Saturday morning noise of my family and dogs. Kindle in front of me, eyes overflowing as I read, desperate to know if the words “sent” or “unsent” would appear. What can I say? Epistolary content gets me every time.
TL;DR: Five stars simply doesn’t seem like enough. I would like to give this book all the stars. Please read it. You will not regret it.
Thank you to NetGalley and to Forever Publishing for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
