I recently read Christina Lauren’s Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, which I reviewed here. While waiting for other holds to come in from the library, I turned to another book by the writing duo: Something Wilder.
A Summary
Something Wilder sounded like a blast of a book to read. It’s presented as a mixture of romance and adventure-seeking/treasure-hunting/action novel.
Lily grew up in the shadow of her famous treasure hunter dad, the late Duke Wilder. He may have been notorious at hunting down historic treasure, but he wasn’t winning any awards for dad-of-the-year. With an often absent father and a mostly empty bank account, Lily has learned to be resourceful – to count on only herself to make it in the world. Since the time of her father’s death, she’s worked hard to stay afloat, leading fake treasure hunting tours in the wilderness of Utah. Everything comes to a halt, however, when her newest group of vacationers include her first love: city-boy Leo Grady. And boy, do things escalate from there, as I’m sure you can imagine.
Unfortunately, this book was a total flop for me.
Why Something Wilder Didn’t Work for Me
The Relationship Happens in the Past
Everything we know about Leo and Lily as a couple – why they love each other and how they connect – is rooted in what happened a decade before the story takes place. There’s a little bit of discussion about how they’ve grown since that time, but they pretty immediately pick back up with their infatuation with one another from when they were 18.
Only having several flashbacks and memories from the two characters to serve as why they work as a couple wasn’t enough for me. I needed more reason to root for them.
And because most of their romance and friendship-building and connecting happened “off screen” literally in the past, it felt like a lust-driven romance with no good roots, which is not my favorite. I think this could have been handled better.
The authors could’ve included more flashbacks, including some that were not related to sex. Or they could’ve done a slower build back together. After all, ten years is a really long time to not speak to someone at all, which leads me to…
All Drama is Centered on Miscommunication
…All of Lily and Leo’s drama is centered on the miscommunication trope. Which I hate. It’s overused. And not only that, they chose the most stereotypical of miscommunication tropes in the book: they thought the other never called them back. And that was that.
You didn’t try to call again? Or send an email? One missed phone call, and the relationship was history. Not realistic and not original.
Badly Plotted & Paced
Okay, moving from Lily and Leo to the general plot. Um… it escalates. Very quickly and randomly. Starting with a group of friends going on vacation in Utah to one guy pulling a gun to one guy getting killed/murdered to this other guy who was actually in on it all along to kidnappings and so on and so forth. No joke.
It got crazy real quick with very little recourse or accountability on 90% of it. Christina Lauren definitely didn’t set up some of these characters to have this kind of twist. I’m good with a twist and a “didn’t-see-that-coming” plot, but this book felt really haphazard and, thus, unbelievable.
Read Instead:
I cannot recommend Something Wilder for a number of reasons. If you’re looking for a rom-com, check out these books instead:
- When in Rome (Sarah Adams, book #1)
- Practice Makes Perfect (book #2)
- Nora Goes Off Script (Annabel Monaghan)
- Same Time Next Summer (Annabel Monaghan)
- Love & Other Great Expectations (Becky Dean)
- Love, Lists, & Fancy Ships (Sarah Grunder Ruiz)
Final Thoughts
Something Wilder felt like the authors came up with all these fun ideas and smashed them together without thinking through how to make it make sense.
There was also a serious case of foul language and some pretty steamy scenes.
All in all, Something Wilder was a total miss for me. It didn’t feel like a good story or writing in my opinion, which is a shame because the premise could have been seriously fun if handled differently.
Content Rating: Extreme
frequent usage of the F-word and fairly graphic, repeated sex scenes
Copyright Christina Lauren and Gallery Books. Image from Amazon.