Hello everyone!
I am here with another review, The Wicker King by K. Ancrum. Thanks to Raincoast Books for sending me an ARC of this book for an honest review, as always, all opinions are my own.
I'm not sure I can even give a semi-decent synopsis of this book. The story follows two teenaged boys, August and Jack. August is a drug-dealing pyromaniac and Jack, quite literally, lives in his own world. The two were childhood friends, and then grew apart, but hang out together outside of school (one of those no recognition at school friendships apparently). From what I got, they eventually go on a mission to, I don't know, live/find Jack's imaginary world.
The issues with this book started for me from the very beginning. Before I could even get interested in the story, I had a really hard time distinguishing between August and Jack. They have very similar voices and although they have different quirks, they both have quirks - so I couldn't just pick the quirky one and remember him as August, etc. I spent more energy trying to figure out who was who than I did focusing on the story, and I think that threw off my ability to connect to the story initially.
If I was able to keep the characters straight for a minute, I had a hard time figuring out the story. The game they used to play is significant but I didn't really catch the full significance of the river scene. I just felt like there was nothing and everything going on at once and I couldn't keep any of it straight.
I also found the writing style to be a little choppy. Almost every new page was a new mini-chapter. I felt like I should have been reading a book written in verse, that's often how they are set up. But I just couldn't get a good flow and found the story jumped around a bit too much for my liking.
The worst part is, I really wanted to love this book. There was the promise of a great friendship, an imaginary world, not to mention the countless graphics on the pages as well as documents, pictures, files, and news articles spread throughout the book. This should have been the perfect storm of all the things I love - there was even a mini-road trip, my Achilles heel! But even that wasn't enough to keep me reading.
Overall, not a favourite.