Although we almost never see them all together, Desiree, January, Monique, and Nakia are the kind of friends who act more like family. In Wilderness, author Angela Flournoy examines brief periods in the women’s lives as they navigate through young adulthood into middle age in contemporary America. Flourney drops readers into a whirlwind of characters and nonchronological events, but it all comes together to tell a beautiful story of friendship that perseveres through difficult times — both personal and political. Wilderness is a good choice for literary fiction readers who enjoy unconventional structures and novels about strong women.

This one took me a little time to settle into, but once I did? Whew. The Wilderness is intimate and layered—a story about friendship, womanhood, grief, love, and the mess in between.

Flournoy gives us five women—Desiree, Danielle, Nakia, January, and Monique—and lets their lives unfold across time. The multiple POVs made this feel like more of a character study than a plot-driven novel, but I appreciated how deeply human it felt.

Some timeline jumps caught me off guard, and it took a second to adjust, but once I did, the emotional impact hit. The sisterhood? The flaws? The real-life struggles? It all felt very close to home.

Thank you NetGalley & Mariner Books for the ARC

Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness is a luminous, emotionally challenging novel that charts twenty years in the lives of five Black women. Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia all navigate friendship, identity, and the challenges of adulthood while seeking meaning in life. Through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, Flournoy masterfully brings each voice to life. It was easy for me to fall in love and feel invested in each character of this story.

At the heart of the novel are sisters Desiree and Danielle, whose shared history isn’t enough to mend the deep rift between them. Their fractured bond becomes a powerful thread in a story that begins and ends in grief, unfolding against a backdrop of community violence, immigrant injustice, and rising threats to the most vulnerable among us.

This is fiction that feels achingly real. It provides an exploration of how even our strongest alliances and blood ties aren’t always a safety net. In the end, The Wilderness invites us to ask: who are we becoming, and what choices will define our journey?

Powerful, unflinching, and unforgettable.

This book was sweet and sad and just a lovely read. I really enjoyed being sucked into this world and experiencing the friendships involved.

Thank you to HarperCollins Publishers and Net Galley for the advance reader's ebook.

The Wilderness follows four friends who live between LA and New York City. We have jumps in time from roughly 2008 to 2027. The wilderness refers to a period of adulthood, our 30s and 40s, when adults try to ground themselves to a more secure place in the world through work, family, friends, having children, and starting new ventures. Nakia owns two restaurants in L.A. but feels at times uncomfortable in her role as the boss. Desiree takes care of her grandfather and has had difficulty building her own career. January has a feeling of emptiness in her long-term relationship and seeks new connections. Monique has a career as a librarian but is drawn to become an influencer.

Each of these characters is so different in their aspirations and needs, but common among them is a feeling of loneliness. They all tend to face challenges on their own. The four friends do consistently show up for each other, but they don't always open up to each other fully.

With a deft hand this author tackles issues pertinent to adults today including post-partum health, death of a close family member, militarization of the police and ai's role in policing, undocumented workers, gentrification, the sanitization of history, the rise of the influencer, and models for social change.

The tone of the book does feel like a trek. It is as though the reader is in a wilderness endlessly hoping for some rest for these characters who have so much on their shoulders. It is a feeling of weariness that all different kinds of readers will be able to understand. However, it is not for the faint of heart. I would say if you're not in the best place mentally maybe wait until you're on stronger footing before diving into this read. There is a heaviness here that is so truthful but not easy.

My favorite thread of this story is the imperative to all of us to hang on to our found families even when it may seem hard. Because when life gets rough those connections can literally save our lives.

Nakia, January, Monique, Desiree and Danielle tackle the complexities of family and friendship in this complex modern literary Waiting to Exhale.

The Wilderness is truly a piece of art not just in terms of prose but structure. As a reader you truly find yourself stopping after each section and pondering what you have just read similar to a looking at a masterpiece at a museum. It has that much depth. If you enjoy books that are not afraid to tackle issues like climate change or social justice in a world where the characters are constantly searching for a place to belong then you will most definitely enjoy The Wilderness.

I’m always drawn to books about female friendship and this was a fantastic read! A brilliant story about class, power and life long friendships!

This exceptional novel highlights the complexities of life done in a way that felt reflective of the interconnectedness of the characters in the book. While the book keeps the reader on their toes by switching timelines and characters and locations throughout, this careful reading shined a light on Angela Flournoy's brilliant writing. Highly recommend!

Despite a lengthy into, I liked this book. I was unclear exactly where the plot was going at times, but i ended up connecting with the characters.

A beautifully written story about the complexities of female friendship. I really appreciate novels that take the time to explore character studies and the intricacies of relationships between friends, and this book did exactly that. It's a powerful depiction of Black womanhood, told through the perspectives of five friends as they navigate life’s challenges...both individually and together.

I’m giving it 4 stars only because the storytelling didn’t always feel cohesive to me, but I’m still eager to read more from Flournoy in the future!

I got to about 50% of the book and am soft DNFing. I really enjoyed the flawed characters and seeing their dynamics but the structure of the book was VERY confusing. I am going to circle back when the final book is released because I am still definitely interested in the story.

MY FIRST ARC!!!!! I was so excited to be able to read @angelaflournoy’s new book! Thank you so much @marinerbooks for the arc!! And thank you @netgalley!!

THE WILDERNESS
by Angela Flournoy
(Available 9/16/25)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I just have to say that this book was an absolute pleasure to read - and that’s just the writing alone! The writing is elevated in every way - cinematic, smart, emotional, honest - while at the same time being fully accessible. I was drawn in immediately and enjoyed every word.

THE WILDERNESS is the story of Desiree, January, Nakia, Monique and Danielle and their relationships beginning in their 20s through their 40s. At the start this feels like connected stories - each chapter is told from a different point of view and also from a different year. It’s skips around in time quite a bit. But it actually coalesces into a definitive novel by the end.

This is a deep dive into the friendships between women, the highs and lows in their individual lives as well as their relationships with each other, over the course of two decades. It doesn’t shy away from the hurtful and hard parts of long term adult friendships. At the same time it highlights the truth that these friendships are often what sustain us as adults - these people become our chosen families at their core. They care for us and love us no matter what.

I wasn’t totally on board with the last part because I was a touch confused as to what happened, but in the end it doesn’t matter because the raw emotion and honest portrayal of these women’s lives and love for each other carried the book easily. Highly, highly recommend!

Liz Hein <lizlaurenhein@gmail.com>
6:55 AM (34 minutes ago)
to me

Adult life is absolutely a wilderness, and Angela Flourney conveys that through five Black women navigating young adulthood through the next twenty years of life. We meet Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia in their early twenties, starting with Desiree as she travels abroad with her father figure as he prepares to end his life and ending in a near distant future. Each woman has a story to tell and the link is their friendship - with all its joys, struggles, and consequences.

I LOVED this book. So much. Flournoy has so much to say about this period of life, friendship, race, class, power, and so much more, though this never feels overcooked. These women and the way they show up for each other felt so real and true. The novel jumps around in time and from coast to coast, meeting each woman at various parts of their lives, making this feel *almost* like linked short stories, yet this is very much a novel. A novel with an ending that took my breath away and made me read it again. The Kirkus review calls it elegant and unsettling and...yes.

Flourney's writing is next level. In someone else's hands, this might have felt disjointed and like an "issues book". Instead, this book gave me such richly drawn characters navigating the realities of life as a Black woman in America that I'm shocked they don't actually exist somewhere, waiting for us readers to come hear them talk about their collective memoir. Sadly this doesn't publish until September, but I'm looking forward to going back to Flourney's debut, The Turner House while awaiting pub day. Thank you so much @marinerbooks for this copy, sure to be a favorite of my year.

I quite enjoyed skipping through time with this friend group, to see where major decisions and unforeseeable circumstances would take them.

I love a story with an overarching theme of female friendship and how relationships evolve as characters navigate their own lives. These characters were complex, nuanced, and I appreciated how Flourney brought each of their personalities, struggles, and issues to light.

However, I felt that this book was trying to say and do too many things all at once. The timeline jumped sporadically which made it difficult to keep up with what happened when. Though this may be something that gets corrected in the final draft, I can only review what I've read.

The description mentioned that Danielle, Desiree, Monique, January, and Nakia find their way through the wilderness together. I wouldn't say that's accurate as Danielle wasn't a part of the friend group, and she was also largely missing from the narrative. We get her POV pretty late in the book and only once. I wanted more of her side as she was a huge part of Desiree's story.

I was also very confused at how the story ended, particularly for Nakia. Without spoiling anything, I'll say again that it felt like too much was happening.

Overall, I enjoyed getting to know these characters. This was not for me, but I'm confident it will be enjoyable for other readers.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy. The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy follows four friends while they navigate that wild period of their young adulthood where one tries to figure out their place in the world. Set against the backdrop of NYC and LA, we follow Desiree, January, Monique and Nakia through heart break, careers and the changing dynamics of an increasingly volatile landscape. What struck this reader is how Flournoy shows us how vital friendship is- how it will break your hearts but mend it all the same. I could not stop reading this beautiful book and will read everything else Angela Floury writes.

Angela Flournoy demonstrates her undeniable talent as a prose stylist in Wilderness, crafting sentences with precision and care that remind readers why she's considered such a promising voice in contemporary fiction. However, this friendship-centered narrative struggles under the weight of its own ambitions. Flournoy weaves together multiple thematic threads and subplots that, while individually compelling, create a momentum problem that prevents the story from finding its natural rhythm. The novel's pacing suffers as it shifts between these various elements, never quite allowing any single storyline to breathe fully. Most notably, despite Flournoy's technical skill, none of the characters manages to leap off the page with the kind of magnetic presence that transforms a good book into an unforgettable one. The friends at the story's center remain frustratingly distant, leaving readers admiring the craft while wishing for deeper emotional connection. Wilderness feels like a talented writer still finding her way to the story that will fully showcase her considerable abilities.

I requested this latest by Angela Flournoy because I adored her earlier, The Turner House. This newest novel did not disappoint. Loved her portrayal of female friendship in particular. She has become a must-read author for me.

Thematically, this book definitely felt like a call back to the works of Terry McMillan and Eric Jerome Dickey’s Sister Sister. The chapters and perspective changes within the chapter had an episodic nature that made it feel like I was reading a television series. The 20-year time jumps with 5 different perspectives and the occasional side character felt disorienting, and I wish there was more of how things happened to the characters instead of just providing the what and the why. The characters were relatable and realistic. The ending felt rushed and seemed to prioritize the purpose over the plot. It was a good enough read. Turner House is probably still my preference.

Have you ever wondered about the deep connections between women? Well, buckle up, because 'The Wilderness' is a novel that dives into sisterhood, especially between five women throughout their adult lives.
The story follows Desire and Danielle, sisters whose strained relationship is the heart of the narrative. Their journey towards reconciliation is heartwarming. Then there's January, a young woman facing an unplanned pregnancy with a man she doesn't love. Her story adds another layer of emotional depth to the mix, making it even more relatable.
Monique, a spirited librarian, is my favorite character. She's brave, unwavering in her beliefs, and always there for her friends. And let's not forget Nakia, an aspiring entrepreneur in the restaurant industry.

Monique, a spirited librarian, is my favorite character. She's brave, unwavering in her beliefs, and always there for her friends. And let's not forget Nakia, an aspiring entrepreneur in the restaurant industry.
Now, I know the writing style might take some time to get used to, but once it settled into a rhythm, I was fully immersed in the story. The plot is intricate and well developed, and the characters are so relatable that you'll feel like you're right there with them.
If you're a fan of character driven stories, then
'The Wilderness' is definitely worth checking out.
It will leave a lasting impact on you.