A History of Wild Places

This book has a lot going for it. It was well written and the audiobook was excellent. I liked the setting, the differences of the characters and the slow burn mystery. There was a small bit of the supernatural but it wasn't the main point of the story. Definitely worth a read or better yet listen to the audiobook which was very well done.

GRRR. This book was so frustrating to me, because for the first two-thirds, it was unquestionably a five-star read. The way it all concluded, though - WHY. WHY WHY WHY. Especially in a world in which it's immediately established on that magic exists - one character gets flashes of sentiment and stories whenever he touches an item someone else has touched first, another can hear and interpret heartbeats - why wouldn't you take a creative, compelling approach to resolution over a ‘grounded' ending that defies belief?!

Normally, I tolerate just-OK plots so long as the writing is good. The writing here is gorgeous, if occasionally overwrought - dark, moody, dreamlike, building a sense of dread that reminded me of Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind. But the plot felt like such an afterthought, I just couldn't get past it. Without getting too specific (but stop reading if you want to be 100% unspoiled!), the control mechanism the plot rests on was not compelling (and frankly borderline cliche), and the epilogue section glazed over a key plot point (like, OK, everyone in the entire community just accepted this world-shattering information and unconcernedly went on with their lives? no questions, pushback, anger? it's just...all good?). I felt like the author knew in broad strokes where she wanted to go but didn't think deeply enough about how to get there.

The beautiful and off the grid location which is amplified by great visual writing is what hooked me to this book. I could sometimes hear the birds and feel the summer breeze.

Although the „power“ of the first main character that we meet at the beginning feels kind of gimmicky, the mystery that unfolded was interesting enough. That is until around 30% in, where there are so many obvious „hints“ that I instantly knew one of the major twists. I don't know if the author wanted to be sneaky or not, but come on.

From that point on the writing and location were the only things that kept me going. Unfortunately it also got worse towards the end. One twist I correctly guessed and the other was incredibly ridiculous.

This was such a good book! I loved the shifting POVs and the slow reveals. This is a book about a hidden community - and the dangers it faces when it is threatened by outsiders.

I only wished that we got more of a why for how certain things happened and the more immediate history of Pastoral.

Read for Stacks of Strange: January 2022

The only way I can describe this as is The Year of the Witching meets Follow Me to Ground. What's not to love? 

This hovers between 3.5 to 4 stars for me, but I'd round it up to 4. This started off pretty interesting with some low magic and slight supernatural powers, but then it quickly became a delectable page-turner with a deep mystery revolving around an isolated, cult-like community in the middle of nowhere, America.

We start off meeting Travis Wren, who is gifted with the power of seeing the memories of people when he touches an object that they used to own or had come into contact with recently. It's both a blessing and a curse for Travis, but he chooses to use his talents to help people locate missing friends and family. This time, he's on the trail of Maggie St. James, a children's author who had gone missed a few years prior. In following the ghostly after-images of Maggie St. James, Travis stumbles upon a community called Pastoral. We then hop years later into the perspective of married couple Theo and Calla who have built their lives in Pastoral. The community is isolated because they are afraid of a mysterious pox-like disease from the elm trees around them, that infects and kills anyone who wanders past their village borders. But Theo is persistently haunted by the thought of seeing what lies outside of Pastoral, especially after he stumbles upon a derelict and abandoned truck belonging to Travis Wren not far beyond their borders.

This book was just really exciting. Right from the get-go there were so many questions and tidbits that were dropped for the reader's benefit in solving the overarching mystery. Part One was the part that felt the longest, primarily because it was one huge, long chapter spanning 70+ ebook pages for me. Nevertheless, it was still interesting enough as we follow Travis's story, understand the powers he had, and find out about the way his powers have both wrecked his life but also given him the ability to bring salvation or closure to others. After that, Part Two and after all have amazingly short chapters which probably contribute to how fast-paced the book felt. I probably read 80% of it in one sitting and wasn't able to put it down until 5am when I finally finished it.

Our three main protagonists are Theo, Calla, and Calla's younger sister Bee, who had mysteriously lost her vision more than a decade ago as a teenager. This being a mystery, we don't actually have the chance for much character development. Theo and Calla just seemed to me like a regular married couple except that they're dealing with increasing suspicions about each other and also with this whole elm pox situation with Pastoral. Despite Theo and Calla being the primary movers and shakers in the mystery, I kinda feel that we actually got a lot more character development out of Bee. Being visually impaired, Bee is gifted with an almost supernatural way of sensing everything else. She moves through the world and senses people and things around her even better than sighted people would. She assists with the pregnancies and births in Pastoral by listening to fetal heartbeats and somehow determining the health of the fetus - basically a human stethoscope. She can even locate her sister Calla in a crowd, because she “smells like yellow and like sunshine”. Furthermore, because Bee is so introspective, we see a lot more about her thoughts, her life, her hopes and expectations, her emotions, etc. With Theo and Calla, it felt a bit flat in comparison.

Pastoral was also a really interesting concept. I don't usually like stories revolving around cults because they tend to be heavily based in some kind of Judeo-Christian tenets which I've just kinda lost interest in reading about at this point. Pastoral, though, doesn't seem to be based in any kind of religious values, so that already made it rather more refreshing to read about. Instead, the community is pretty nature-centric, believing that nature is both healing and destructive at the same time. When people wander too far from the village and are brought back, they are cleansed with a “ritual”. I won't spoil what exactly it entails, but the principle behind it is that the community believes strongly that the earth itself is able to heal the infectious pox. The irony is that they also believe the pox originates from the elm trees which stems from the earth.

Pastoral is also not as heavily militarized as some other cults I've read in other stories. People seem to be somewhat free to leave the community so it's not like a hostage situation, but choose not to because of their fear of the pox. The community have sometimes also welcomed new joiners who either stumble upon them accidentally or have intentionally sought them out, although it is mentioned that no new joiners have come for the past decade. The gates of Pastoral are lightly guarded with armed sentries (Theo being one of the night guards) but they seem to be merely keeping an eye out for any movement in or out of the community, which is extremely rare in the first place, rather than to shoot trespassers or defectors on sight.

The central mystery of the book is very compelling, kind of in parallel with the excerpts of the children's book authored by Maggie St. James, and revolving around the fate of Travis Wren and Maggie. I correctly guessed some parts of the solution but it was still a good enough development that I felt accomplished for managing to guess it out rather than disappointed that it had been predictable. Some spoilery thoughts on the ending and solution of the mystery: I had somehow, at about a 50% mark and on a limb, guessed that Theo was actually Travis and Calla was Maggie with false memories. I think I just figured that if Travis had been in the house and everything pointed to him still being in Pastoral, the easiest place for him to be is still to be in that house, i.e. be Theo. Plus, Bee kept talking about how the name of Travis Wren was so familiar but it was shrouded in her memory, there was such a big element of hidden memories which led me to that theory about Theo being Travis. I was suspecting some kind of mass hallucination because the rot can't be real. We already saw the outside world in Part One and there's no plague happening, so it was either that 1) there is a real rot but somehow only specifically infecting inhabitants of Pastoral, like perhaps a secret injection somewhere, or 2) the rot was an illusion somehow. I also kept wondering why Maggie's mother knew to point Travis in the direction of Pastoral and was glad that it was thoroughly addressed at the end of the book. Even though I guessed some of these correctly, I didn't feel disappointed because it felt earned. I felt like the author did a great job at sprinkling these hints right from the very beginning for readers to be able to make that conclusion, rather than having a deus ex machina or some completely off-the-wall solution right at the end. Things I didn't quite like about the ending: the fact that the antagonist really was Levi. He just felt like such an obvious choice right from the very beginning so I was hoping for a twist there. I also lol'ed a bit at how he kinda did that whole “villain unnecessarily explaining every single detail of their plot before failing to kill the hero” monologue with Bee at the end. I also wish the aftermath was a bit more fleshed out, it seemed a bit convenient that everybody would just happily go along with Bee's explanation and even though it had been a hypnotism thing, I think having been drummed with the same story and values for more than a decade might entrench a belief system much more deeply than was depicted here.

Overall though, a very very enjoyable mystery that really kept me going, “One more chapter. Just another chapter. I need to find out what's going on.” all the way to the end.

I suppose the best way to sum this one up is that it's “fine.”

While it starts out strong, it devolves from there. The early narrative shift makes the plot twists that the plot hinge upon predictable almost from the get-go. The villain's motives aren't unveiled until far later in the story, when the villain presents themselves. If it was a character the reader had any sort of affections for it would've perhaps been more effective, but as it stands?

Meh.

There's little feel for Travis and Maggie from earlier in the story to make the reader feel any connection with either character or want any sort of catharsis. What kept me going was that it's well written and flowed really well.

Bee ended up being the star of the book, making Theo and Calla's chapters fine, but at times Call didn't seem to have much of a role in the plot and her chapters were brief and just there to keep the POV order in place. But yeah, Bee was good.

This would probably be a 2.5 if Goodreads allowed it.

Wow! This book left me with a book hangover. It was so much more than what I expected. In the prologue, we meet Travis. Since it was the prologue we didn't stay with him long and I was a little sad because I liked him. Then we meet Theo, Calla, and Bee. It took me a while to figure out the timeline and I really like that Ernshaw didn't just tell me the answer. She gave me hints here and there about the timeline, so I had to adjust to Pastoral, which made me feel like I was in the story. There were multiple surprising twists and I liked the way they were revealed. And the ending was perfect! Shea Ernshaw can really weave a good story.

No. I'm quitting this at 16%. I read the very end to see what the hell is going on and it's not good enough to make it worth my time. It's such a slog, with flowery prose that is there to pretend this is some good writing. It isn't.
Multiple POV characters, why? Especially in first person! The author is just so in love with her own voice that there is literally no meaning in it. Sure, it's probably for mystery reasons or whatever, but I expect a bit more than blabbering about what the floor feels like or what flower's smell they can feel from yet another useless clone character.
There was no pressure, no urgency, just boring ass pages of descriptions of mundane things.

I loved the plot, the characters, and the way the story is told by three primary people. My only complaint is that the reveal of what's happening feels a little weak, however, I think many people underestimate the power that a cult-like environment can have over the way we think. Overall, I really enjoyed this one.

Copy/paste from BLC and added comments; This was quite an interesting book! First, I really enjoyed the way it's written, quite addicting I thought! I'd also agree that the 'magic' or ability that Travis had was not used enough, so I felt like it was.. 'useless', for this plot. I thought going in, Travis would be constantly using it throughout the book to better understand it and capabilities beyond what he can do and how to use it, which I was excited for. Instead, it just came up in the beginning and at the end, and I feel like it could have probably just been taken out entirely, and the story would have still made sense. The build-up in Part 1 was great! Travis travels and shares his story of his father, his power, and his sister's death. But again, a great ability fell short as it was only brought up after (for him). I expected the story to further explain his ability, so I guess it's a good thing it gave me a totally different plot..? I'm not sure what to think. The fact that Levi used hypnosis to brainwash and control everyone.. I kind of guessed it by the end of Part 2 but I was still surprised lol I guess my theory behind the inkblot works! (loss of reality, psychosis, seeing unusual things, etc.) Frustrating that the mom kind of strongly nudged her daughter to go to Pastoral, but I'm glad Theo and Calla decided to stay together and continue with their 'new' life, leaving their old, painful past aside. Edit: Since it seems I missed the chuck at the ending, it brings the attention of what is happiness? Do you leave everything behind and back to a place where you were thinking who you actually weren't?

I loved this book.. Written with both detail and emotion. The plot was very creative too.

Rating: 4 leaves out of 5Characters: 3.5/5 Cover: 5/5Story: 3.5/5Writing: 4/5Genre: Horror/FantasyType: EbookWorth?: YesHated Disliked It Was Okay Liked Loved FavoritedI would like to say that it is very fitting for to forget I suggested this book to become the BC book of the month XD Besides that, I am very thankful and happy that people picked the book I suggested. (They had not a clue who suggested the book till after the book is selected.) As far as the book goes, I am not sure horror fits into this slot though I could see the genre sprinkle about. If you are old enough to remember the movie Village and liked it, I think you would like this in a sense. It has the same creep vibes that go along with it and some minor details. I did hate hate hate some characters and I understand what they were going through but at the same time that dumbfounded follow-you-into-boiling-lava mindset is not for me. I had to put the book down a good too many times.I did like the connections that came through. Though I wish we got more of Travis, though I understand the reasoning behind that. All in all it was a pretty darn good book!Shameless plus Are you looking for a place to talk about books with a community? Well boy oh boy do I have a place for you. Come on down to Book Lovers Club on discord! We have 22.8K members. 390 channels for you to swim in. Need something new? I am sure you can find a book you never heard of! I know I stretched my reading bubble a lot when joining! We have perks! Buddy reads for a smaller group of people. Each month we do a Book Club and a Bonus Book Club book! So if you are trying to reach that reading goal, we are here for you! Come and join us for a good ole time of books and fun!

The pacing in this book hurt my feelings. It wasn't interesting until about halfway through. I liked the twist, though I was kind of hoping for ghosts or for Eloise to really be Bee, but I accept the real story. I wish we had more of a backstory on the characters that Levi made up for Maggie/Calla and Travis/Theo. Why those names? And how did it take 7 years for someone who gardens to find something that was shallowly buried? The mystery genre always seems to be lacking for me.

4.5⭐ rounded down because I feel parts of this book were incredibly repetitive. It took awhile to get to the point of the sudden shift in the book which obviously all made sense with the reveal, but a different writing style might have suited this book. The reveal was kind of predictable however I do think the author did a great job portraying the hold an abusive relationship can have over someone. I have never been in a cult, but this fear mongering and controlling behavior from the leader could explain the more violent cult behavior.

Loved it. A woodsy, creepy mystery that kept me up way too late.

Superb atmospheric writing. Ernshaw does a wonderful job selling Pastoral and building it up in your mind with her fantastic prose. I enjoyed all the characters for the most part and there are some of them where their actions match their personality so incredibly well.

But this book's not a 3 star or higher for me, because there are a lot of plot holes and the twist itself to me, is just something I can't believe as an explanation at all. The atmospheric writing is so strong that this may not actually matter to many people that read the novel, but for me I read a mystery for the mystery. Here the mystery just isn't on point imo. 

This is such a creepy, atmospheric, suspenseful read. I loved how Ernshaw describes the places and people of Pastoral. The characters were so vivid and unique, I really enjoyed this. The only think I wasn't hugely enthusiastic was Travis's story in the beginning - he had a “poor-me” martyr vibe that I didn't enjoy. But the switch to part 2 fixed that.

It started off a little slow for me but I got hooked halfway through. I didn't see the twists coming until the last second and sped through the second half of the book to find out what happened.

The book is beautifully descriptive in a way that builds the community of Pastoral for all your senses.

An interesting story filled with mystery, lies, love, and morality.

Well that was NOT was I expected

This book kind of freaked me out. It wasn't published that long ago yet I still felt such a sense of deja vu while I was reading it... Nevertheless I loved the atmosphere, up until like the last 30% where it just lost me. I couldn't wait for it to be over at that point and was no longer invested in the story. Bummer because the first 2/3rds of the book I really enjoyed, the ending was just lack luster for me.

The first chapter had such an original premise, the tone and atmosphere were building into something dark and compelling. I wanted to read that book. Then you are thrown into a completely different story, a poor imitation of The Village. Even though you see how the two stories connect from the beginning you hope you are wrong. But you're not wrong, you're never wrong, and actually the ending is even dumber than you thought.

I definitely did not remember anything about this book when I started reading it so it was a bit of a wild ride. Wasn't expecting a thriller but it was certainly a page turner. Definite suspension of disbelief required for the whole hypnosis concept (especially the eyesight), but I don't think it detracted from the story.

I loved this book. The writing was beautiful, transformative. The characters were well-developed. The big reveal at the end was a stretch of the imagination a bit, but I was happy to go along. Loved it! 

No matter where you go, there are cracks in the plaster, nails coming loose, you just have to decide where you want to piece yourself back together. Where the ground feels sturdiest beneath your feet.

Predictable and plodding - filled with many frustrating plot points and developments that annoyed me just enough to keep me in that state-of-mind throughout. It was page-turning, but I cared little and knew the big twist long before it is revealed. If you want to read something fantastic with a similar vibe, try Arcadia by Lauren Groff. It's a 5 star read.