Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on November 15, 2022 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.
The Wilderwomen is a contemporary fantasy novel written by author Ruth Emmie Lang. The novel follows two sisters - Zadie, who's in her early 20s, secretly pregnant and just leaving the place she used to stay with her ex; and Finn, who is just about to leave her foster family for college for the first time - as they go on a ride to try and figure out why their mom left them five years ago. But Zadie and Finn aren't quite normal - they both have extrasensory powers, with Zadie able to gain glimpes of the future and Finn able to experience the memories of others tied to a place, and their mother might've had such powers as well. And so the story follows the two as Finn desperately tries to search for her mom and Zadie follows along regretfully, trying not to lose the last relationship she values.
The result is in large part an effective novel of two sisters who love each other but are different both in age and temperament, with Finn hopeful of finding answers and coming from a decent situation and Zadie cynical due to what she once observed and the rough life she's had since her mom left. And the road trip story here is pretty effective, as the two sisters encounter people and places that change their understanding of what happened and who they are. At the same time, the book seems to be leading up to some interesting ideas or answers and instead peters out, with its ending just being abrupt and kind of unsatisfying in how it answers its central idea...and in the process it manages to tie off every question in ways that didn't really work. The result is a mixed bag.
More explanation after the jump:
Plot Summary:
Zadie and Finn Wilder grew up loving sisters under the parentage of their mother Nora Wilder. Though they didn't share fathers (both of whom they never knew) they cared distinctly for each other, especially as they both grew and developed strange gifts: for Zadie, having sudden uncomfortable premonitions of the future; for Finn, being able to be immersed in memories or echoes left behind by others in the places she was. And then Nora Wilder left and disappeared. And so the sisters were torn apart, with Finn being sent to live with a Foster Family while Zadie, who was technically an adult, was left on her own. They've tried to keep in touch over the five years since then, but it has been tremendously hard.
Now, both of them are on the verge of new precipices in their lives - Zadie, now secretly pregnant, has just been kicked out of her place by her ex; and Finn is just about to graduate high school and head off to college. To celebrate Finn's achievement, the two have planned a road trip to the Beach...but when Finn feels an echo belonging to her mother that suggests a possible way to find her, Finn demands that Zadie go with her instead on a quest to find Nora Wilder and to reunite them if at all possible.
But what really happened to Nora Wilder all those years ago? Zadie remembers parts of it, which Finn doesn't, when Nora began having lapses and negligently abandoning them at times. And as Finn starts to get more and more caught up in her echoes, will Zadie have to see the same thing happen to her as did Nora, or will she find some way to prevent her sister, like her mom, from becoming lost?
The Wilderwomen is told generally from the perspectives of Finn and Zadie, with the story switching off between them from time to time (chapters aren't devoted to just one POV, the story switches more liberally). The story also occasionally flashes back, almost always (if not always) from Zadie's point of view, to the moments that lead up to Nora Wilder's disappearance. In this way the reader has aspects of what happened, and how it affected Zadie particularly, revealed to them slowly as the story goes forward.
The core of the story really is Zadie and Finn, their characters and their relationship as they go on this journey - Finn desperately, Zadie unwillingly - to try to find Nora. For Zadie, this journey is something she absolutely does not want because her mom was the one who abandoned her and left her to a life which has only treated her poorly: she didn't get a kind foster family like Finn did to help her when Nora left, her relationships have all ended up poorly - sometimes due to the guy's fault (like her most recent ex who is the father of her unborn child) and sometimes not completely - and she's basically found herself with no one to support her other than Finn. And even there, Finn's life with her foster family has kept Finn away more and more, such that their planned trip to the beach together is Zadie's last hope of keeping a connection going...so when it morphed into the quest for her mother, well, Zadie doesn't feel like she has a choice but to follow. Add in the fact that Zadie's foresight ability throws her for a loop when it happens and resulted in her worst moment of pain (as revealed eventually in the flashbacks) and it's easy to see why she would be so grumpy and unhappy going on this quest but also unable to say no.
Meanwhile Finn loves Zadie back for sure but, due to being sheltered first by Zadie and then by good luck* in the Foster System with a good set of caring foster parents who want to formally adopt her. Finn however only has loving memories of Nora and is conflicted by feeling like accepting the adoption would betray Zadie and Nora, which is something she really doesn't want to do. And whereas Zadie's powers (from Zadie's perspective) have only resulted in pain and Finn's powers are sometimes incredibly awkward by giving her knowledge she has to act like she doesn't have, Finn doesn't associate those powers with trauma and thus has no worries about using them...even if she starts getting more and more lost in the memories her powers keep showing her.
*Finn's foster family is unequivocally good and caring in this book, which is a wonder. That said, as portrayed in many other books, in real life the foster system can be a crap shoot and result in kids growing up in really poor environments, so this is probably more of an outlier outcome.
The result is a road trip story with two girls with conflicting attitudes but loving dispositions towards each other struggling as they look for any clue that might lead them to their mother. And it works thanks to their relationship and the interesting peoples they meet along the way, like the group of other people with sixth senses at a campground or a family who Nora once stayed with who share a specific power, to the bewilderment of their powerless or even the well meaning but incredibly forgetful and kind of hapless ex-boyfriend of Zadie's they encounter. This makes the story really easy to read pretty quickly and to get involved in.
At the same time, the story kind of has an abrupt ending that was pretty damn unsatisfying. The story works up to the characters having to find Nora and Nora having this big secret of her own sixth sense/power that led her to abandon them and it turns out to be a very literal thing that just feels like a big nothingburger...with it all being found out very abruptly in the end. Similarly, the idea that Finn is following Nora's footsteps in getting lost in her power also goes nowhere, except for how it shows Finn losing control until she finds the power of her sister and mother's love to bring her back. The book gives an impression that there is some big thing that Nora was fighting and it really is not, and it kind of soured me a lot on the ending. It isn't helped by the epilogue chapter having Zadie in what seems like a pretty happy and perfect ideal situation that just seems impossible from what we knew about her circumstances before hand...like the author wrote herself a little into a corner and just decided bam it had to end happily in this way.
The end result is a novel with promise and that I was able to read quickly, but not one that really says much or satisfies, so I can't really recommend it too deeply, even as I was enjoying for a good part of it.
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