Book Review: ‘Wild Place’

I want to start with saying, don’t read this Christian White book first. Oww Mel – harsh!! But true.

I strongly encourage you to pick up and read ‘The Nowhere Child’ and ‘The Wife and the Widow’ prior to reading this book. I say this because sadly, I do not think this new novel is Christian’s best creative work.

Christian’s White can do no wrong in my eyes and I still really enjoyed this novel! I was gripped, I finished it in four sittings and stayed up late needing to know the who, why and how of Tracie going missing. It was a good, quick and … pleasant read. Naturally, it is incredibly hard NOT to compare an authors’ books to one another, especially when the other two are in your top 10 crime fiction reads. Therefore, when I felt a little “Hmm well okay” by the ending and climatic plot twist, I was left a little deflated.

In Christian’s previous books, the climatic twists and character turns are so left hand that you really do not see them coming. This one was a little predictable and dramatic for my liking. In saying that, this is just my opinion and I know others will feel the total opposite to me!

‘Wild Place’ is about a young adult, Tracie who goes missing. We never really hear from the perspective of Tracie which I think I would have enjoyed. Usually, this creates more connection for me to the character and what their inner monologue was at the time of their disappearance. We mostly observe the whole novel from high school teacher Tom. He taught Tracie and feels an overwhelming sense of responsibility to help find her and/or discover when remains of her. But Tom has secrets – Tom’s whole family has secrets actually. Suspicious characters are set up well and there is a theme of devil worshipping/ a witchy cult type lead but all of this seemed, well … a little odd. I guess what I mean is that, reflecting on the story, I wanted something MORE clever, more gritting and more *gasp*esk. I’m a smigin disappointed. HOWEVER, I will continue to read anything Christian White creates as I do believe the good aspects of his writing outweigh the bad.

Wow, I think this is my first negativish book review! Happy Friday folks! 🤣📚