A review by sailor_and_a_maiden
Wildwood by Colin Meloy

3.0

I've tried to start this book several times since it came out, but could never quite get into it. Finally I picked it up again since I read a Russian fairytale (The Magic Swan-Geese) with a similar premise to this novel and hoped I might find some parallels. While the presence of talking animals and the "woods magic" added a fairytale bent to the story, it otherwise didn't feel like a very enchanting read. The illustrations were most of what kept me going--lush woodland details sometimes paralleled in the writing with descriptions of birds and plants, or Prue's hipster Portland life. Unfortunately the main plot seemed to drag--for what seemed to be a middle-grade novel, it was a long book. Some of the battle scenes struck me as surprisingly bloody for middle-grade, but then I read similar things in Rick Riordan novels when I was in middle school and had no problem with it.

Spoiler

One thing that really brought down my rating was the very end. Curtis chose to stay in the Woods and live as a bandit, and no real motivation is given for this except for his bandit oath. It's not clear that he's particularly unhappy at home--he's even shown to be desperately homesick at points in the story. But by the end he's willing to let his parents and sisters believe that he's dead--no magical excuse to make them forget him or believe he's gone off to a special school. Prue runs into Curtis' family at the very end and it's clear they believe he's dead or kidnapped and never coming back. This whole bit struck me as out of character and darkened the tone of the whole story. With some kind of explanation it might have worked, but as-is it makes little sense.