Weekend Reads: “The Wild”

The Wild by Owen Laukkanen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This fast-paced young adult thriller looks not only at family issues, but what happens when those families become desperate.

The narrator, actually an outside party who breaks the proverbial fourth well pretty regularly, tells us about Dawn. Her dad has died (we find out the circumstances partway through the book), and she doesn’t like her stepfather. She’s drinking, using, and shacking up with a guy who is literally twice her age.

So, her folks send her to Out of the Wild, a camp for troubled youth … and this is where the problems begin. The counselors seem unethical from the start, and Dawn doesn’t get on with most of her team. However, she has a crush on Warden, one of the older boys.

When a hike starts to go horribly wrong, Dawn looks to Warden for leadership. But she soon discovers that no one, including the counselors, are quite what they seem. And now, all she can think about is how to get away.

This book grabs you and just doesn’t let go.

View all my reviews