I forgot to leave a review for this, but I really enjoyed it! I LOVE Great Gatsby-esque books. It's been out for ages, so I won't say much more than I need to for my star rating. <3

This book had so much potential and started off strong but then the book just lost interest to me. I felt like it had a lot of potential but just didn’t live up to that for me.

This book started off with strong Gatsby meets Rules of Magic vibes, but around the 50% mark, it started meandering and lost its purpose.

I was enjoying the writing quite a bit in the beginning but it lost its charm over time. The characters had so much potential but ended up being so painfully bland and the plot was just uninteresting. Sadly, it was my most disappointing read of 2022.

Thank you to Redhook Books & Orbit for providing an advanced reading copy!

Rating : 4 out of 5
Blurbs :
On Crow Island, people whisper that real magic lurks just below the surface.

But magic doesn’t interest Annie Mason. Not after it stole her future. She’s on the island only to settle her late father’s estate and, hopefully, reconnect with her long-absent best friend, Beatrice, who fled their dreary lives for a more glamorous one.

Yet Crow Island is brimming with temptation, and the most mesmerizing may be her enigmatic new neighbor.

Mysterious and alluring, Emmeline Delacroix is a figure shadowed by rumors of witchcraft. Soon, Annie is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested, and the cost of illicit magic might be death.

To those who are bright and young; to those who are wild and wicked; welcome to Crow Island.

Thoughts :
An interesting plot and I highly recommend this book if you're a fan of standalone book! It'll be worth your time.

Thanks Netgalley for the early copy!

Francesca May's "Wild and Wicked Things" enchants readers with a haunting and immersive tale set in the lush, decadent backdrop of the 1920s. This gothic fantasy unfolds on Crow Island, a place where whispers of real magic beneath the surface create an atmosphere of mystery and allure.

The narrative centers around Annie Mason, a young woman whose initial disinterest in magic is eclipsed by the tantalizing allure of Crow Island. As she navigates the glamorous world filled with illicit magic, tantalizing romance, and murder, readers are drawn into a web of secrets and shadows. The story is rich with atmospheric details that vividly capture the essence of the Roaring Twenties, offering a compelling blend of historical fiction and dark fantasy.

May's prose is evocative, bringing the island to life with lush descriptions and a sense of foreboding. The character of Emmeline Delacroix, Annie's mysterious neighbor shadowed by rumors of witchcraft, adds a layer of intrigue to the narrative. The exploration of a glittering, haunted world where the boundaries of wickedness are tested adds depth to the storytelling, creating an immersive experience for readers.

May weaves a narrative that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. The themes of temptation, friendship, and the cost of illicit magic are skillfully interwoven, creating a story that is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.

While the pacing is generally engaging, there are moments where the narrative could benefit from a bit more expediency. However, the lush world-building and the complexity of the characters compensate for any occasional slowdowns in momentum.

For those who revel in tales of the supernatural set against the backdrop of a bygone era, "Wild and Wicked Things" is a captivating choice. May's storytelling prowess and her ability to blend magic, romance, and mystery make this novel a delightful and enchanting read. Welcome to Crow Island, where the bright and young, the wild and wicked, are invited to experience a world where the boundaries of reality and magic blur in a spellbinding dance.

I finally got around to reading this gatsby-ish story and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It's dark and magical and full of romance. I loved the writing. It drew me in and kept me reading just reading just because I loved the style and the characters.

I started this book and then really struggled to get back into the book. The premise seems nice, and with a lot of potential. But both plot and characters struggled to capture my imagination and keep my craving to read the book.

I somehow never connected that this was a Great Gatsby remix, and I think if I had I would have enjoyed it more. Finding out after the fact made a lot of things that I was confused by make a lot more sense. (The purple light, for example.)

It relies on vibes more than anything else; the characters are sort of sketched in and the plot is sparse, confusing, and relies on insta-love which is a pet peeve of mine. It is also very slow to start, though there is a sense of creeping dread that sort of accumulates as the book goes on.

However, the tragic gothic 1920s vibes are immaculate. It immediately made me think of Edgar Allan Poe. This is a book to read in the fall, when you can feel the approach of Halloween and the edges of winter.

I appreciated the queer romance, although I wish it had been explored more than just an insta-love bond that is repeatedly denied until the very end.

I also wish the characters had been developed further. They all have tragic pasts that they allow to completely shape their present. That, however, is definitely a Great Gatsby trait and I'm willing to give it a pass.

I listened to the audiobook, which was appropriately dark and ominous and spooky. The narrators did an excellent job inhabiting the vibes of the story, though there was only so much they could do to breathe life into the characters.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Redhook Books for providing an early copy for review.

I really really wanted to love this. The setting was mysterious and intriguing, the descriptions lush and haunting, and the premise drew me in and kept me reading until the end. However, it was a struggle. I found the pacing of this book to be really slow, and that was caused primarily by the way the author wrote her characters. I swear that these characters had the same conversations at least 3 times in 5 chapters, it was getting very repetitive and very tedious to read. I also ended up really disliking almost every character in this book, which I don't believe was the author's intention. They made some very poor decisions and some that I would greatly disagree with, yet we are supposed to empathize with them and see them as the heroes when in truth, all I saw were the consequences of their actions. They don't even really admit that what they did was wrong, they are only regretful of how everything went down, which was so frustrating. Overall, I would maybe be interested in reading more by this author, but I was let down by this one.

I received a free electronic copy for honest review from the publisher through Netgalley. Thanks to them (Redhook) for letting me read it!

Triggers for: death, sexual abuse, violence, spousal abuse

I did not have a good time with this one. I had high hopes, I wanted only good things, but this book and I did not click.
I had a hard time connecting and being interested in the characters and story. They made some of the worst decisions, and then didn't act like they did anything wrong, or that anything was their fault. I'm looking at you Annie and Bea!
Bea's husband is abusive, which is bad, but he is a victim in this. I won't say why because spoilers, but I could understand why he was mad. Bea doesn't see anything wrong with her decisions, which I can't understand. Annie is kind of an idiot. She reacts to something without thinking, she knows she did something not great, but she doesn't think any of it is her fault. She'd probably do it again. They just annoyed me so much.
This book was way longer than it needed to be. There was a lot of space where just nothing was happening.
It has an awful case of insta-love with Emmeline and Annie. They've known each other two weeks, maybe less, and suddenly they are everything to each other. Blech. And the romance stuff was just very messy because at one point Emmeline liked Bea.
Annie needed to focus on what she actually came to the island for, which was to settle her dad's estate. Maybe, if she had looked into who her dad was, she could have figured things out sooner. I just did not like her.
This book was also so melodramatic in an annoying way. All the problems that these characters are having is because they created them. I don't feel bad for them. I do feel a little bad for two of the characters, because they had no part in these antics, but they still had to suffer the consequences.
If I was a dnf'er, I would have stopped reading this one. It's not worth it.

BOOKCITEMENT LEVEL 2/5

I requested this book because I knew it was getting a special edition and I had to know whether or not I would be kicking myself for missing out. Turns out, regret for not purchasing prior to reading was not an issue. I think that this book will work for those who are more interested in historical fantasy books, but unfortunately that is not a genre that I read from EVER or enjoy. I was well and truly bored for the fifty-six percent of the book that I suffered through.

I hope that others pick this up and enjoy it because I do think that if you're into this style of book, you will definitely find something to enjoy here. But unfortunately, this just didn't work for me at all.

Unfortunately, I didn’t love this one. I wanted to so badly! Historical fantasy is one of my favorite genres and this book had so much going for it!

My biggest issue was that I didn’t really find any of the characters particularly likable. Perhaps that was the point? But I wasn’t a fan. This book had so much potential but I couldn’t connect with anyone to root for them which made it a bit lackluster for me.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

I would describe this book as The Great Gatsby meets Practical Magic, or at least that’s how it felt to me.

I was definitely captivated by this story, and drawn into the glamorous world of parties and witchcraft, but I kind of wish that we had been able to delve even deeper into the magic of it all. I guess I wanted to be transported away into it all more, to have the magic be more descriptive and alluring.

I could definitely see the parallels to The Great Gatsby, although to be clear, this story stands on its own. It doesn’t just follow the Gatsby story beat by beat and character by character. You can recognize characters in this as being similar to Nick and Gatsby and Daisy and Tom, but it’s not like they are just plucked from Fitzgerald’s pages and placed into a similar world but with a prohibition on magic rather than booze.

This book is also told with different perspectives as well, and in a couple different timelines, and as each chapter unfolds we add more pieces to our puzzle of understanding these characters and Crow Island’s history.

The reason I draw parallels to Practical Magic is because of the bonds of family and also how sometimes someone you’re close to can get drawn into a relationship that isn’t the best for them…but the best way to get out of it just might be to rely on the family, both blood and found, to save yourself.

All in all, I enjoyed reading this book, and honestly I’d be interested in reading more books set on Crow Island, whether in present, past, or future, because I feel like there could be more stories to tell for this region.

A haunting and immersive gothic tale that transports readers to a decadent world filled with dark magic and tantalizing romance. With its lush prose and complex characters, this book captivates with its sensuous exploration of friendship, love, and the allure of the forbidden.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for giving me free access to the advanced copy of this book to read.

This is a story about dark, glittering magic.

I think it’s important to note that historical fiction (fantasy or otherwise) is generally not for me- but I wanted to try this one bc it was both sapphic & Gatsby themed. I think it captured the era well, and if you enjoy reading about the time period it may work well for you! Unfortunately it was too slow for me, but I would definitely try others by the author.

Thank you Netgalley & Redhook for the copy!

The pacing on this one was a little slow, at least slower than I truly hoped for. I loved the concept, and just felt the execution fell short. I found myself having difficulty wanting to push forward as I felt some scenes were drawn out to the point of boredom. I wanted more between Emmeline and Annie, and ultimately, found myself day dreaming about things that I felt would have just kicked this book up an extra notch. All in all, it was a good read, I just felt like it could have used some more.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

This took me a while to get into. I actually was getting a little frustrated at first but eventually I got more involved and ended up enjoying the book and the characters at the end. Definitely a magical/queer Great Gatsby.

Thank you to Netgalley and Redhook for sending me a copy of this book. All opinions are my own!

The premise of this book was really intriguing, and I was very excited to read it, but it ended up being not executed very well.

I ended up being extremely bored and thought the plot progressed very slowly. It made me want to simply skip to the most important scenes and just forget about the rest of it since everything else felt like filler. The plot was extremely predictable, and it felt like the characters were just willfully ignoring the things that were very obvious.

The characters themselves were not likeable at all. Annie was very naive and both her and Bea were extremely selfish, and Emmeline was just out of touch. Nobody cared about anything but themselves, and they never did anything that actually made any sense. The romance was super flat and I just ended up not caring about a single person because of how annoying they all were.

If it sounds interesting, you might want to give it a chance, but this was definitely not for me.

This book gave: a 1920-30's vibe in England mixed with Practical magic.

This book left me torn. I felt like the set-up, the story, and the background could have been so much more, yet I did like the story it went for. On the other hand, I didn't love the execution of certain things & how sometimes there were too many backstories (some I loved but some I was like....ok), chapters or back & forth POVs that didn't add enough.
I would recommend this because while I wouldn't say I liked a bit of it, I also really enjoyed it. It has a strange charm to it that leaves me confused.