Wild and Wicked Things

Sapphic witchy Great Gatsby sounds like a good tag line. Unfortunately this is one hot mess of a novel, not quite sure what it wants to be.

The first half leans heavily into the Gatsby imagery, partying and lifestyle. The problem here is that the Great Gatsby's success is owed to the fact that it captures a time in history from the perspective of one of its witnesses. The story itself is somewhat of a whole lot of not much happening. Wild and Wicked Things is not trying to capture a reality and that means that its gatsbyisms fall flat. The first half drags and lacks the charm that makes F. Scott Fitzgerald's work the masterpiece that it is.

Then we get to the witchy parts. This is largely dumped on the reader with no background, no worldbuilding. I found myself tripping up over what the author was trying to achieve here. To begin with, magic seems more like a party drug, something to get high on. Towards the end the magic is a completely different animal leading to possession and all sorts of dark things. The jump between the two is somewhat abrupt. I liked the first hint of the magic which was a very intriguing take and could have been expanded much more - the idea of it as a drug. The later magic was both generic and confused.

Finally we come to the characters themselves. Most of them were just plain unlikeable. Bea and Emmeline were both just unpleasant and unpredictable. Annie changed dramatically and unbelievably. I just failed to connect with any of them

There were some interesting ideas here, but in the end the whole thing just did not gel for me