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The Wilderness
"Wonderfully ambitious.... Flournoy explores the complexity of friendship, family, and home in a voice that is expansive yet intimate, humorous yet devastating. I loved this book." — Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half and The Mothers
An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife—in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.
Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy’s masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.
An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife—in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.
Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy’s masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published September 16, 2025
1575 people are currently reading
62913 people want to read
About the author
Angela Flournoy
8 books1,010 followersANGELA FLOURNOY is the author of The Wilderness. Her debut novel, The Turner House, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel won the VCU Cabell First Novel Prize and was also a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and an NAACP Image Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, The New School, Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of California at Los Angeles. She is a faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College.
Flournoy has received fellowships from the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy in Berlin. She was raised in Southern California by a mother from Los Angeles and a father from Detroit.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, The New School, Columbia University, Princeton University and the University of California at Los Angeles. She is a faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College.
Flournoy has received fellowships from the New York Public Library Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy in Berlin. She was raised in Southern California by a mother from Los Angeles and a father from Detroit.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 927 reviews
January 4, 2026
the meaning of life is hanging out with your friends.
i wasn't sure how this book — a sort of generational family saga about a group of friends — was going to work, but i did know we agreed on that.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
the first 10% of this book follows a young woman taking her grandpa to Europe to commit very elegant assisted suicide and it made me forget what this is supposed to be about.
the remaining 90% was largely as over the place.
there are too many perspectives and characters and timelines in this book for the chapters to be this long. it was discombobulating. i kept forgetting where and what and who we were.
as the book progressed it also added a lot of very serious topics and themes to our collection of 900 timelines and characters to track.
by the end i had lost the thread.
bottom line: lot of good stuff here. actually too much of it, really.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
i wasn't sure how this book — a sort of generational family saga about a group of friends — was going to work, but i did know we agreed on that.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
the first 10% of this book follows a young woman taking her grandpa to Europe to commit very elegant assisted suicide and it made me forget what this is supposed to be about.
the remaining 90% was largely as over the place.
there are too many perspectives and characters and timelines in this book for the chapters to be this long. it was discombobulating. i kept forgetting where and what and who we were.
as the book progressed it also added a lot of very serious topics and themes to our collection of 900 timelines and characters to track.
by the end i had lost the thread.
bottom line: lot of good stuff here. actually too much of it, really.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
November 3, 2025
Ok so I cried and sobbed reading this, so I can only hope my review will do this book justice! The Wilderness follows a group of four Black female friends from their early 20’s to their 40’s: Nakia, who’s trying to get her restaurant business off the ground with the backdrop of her family’s upper middle class status; Desiree, whose family history marred by grief is only compounded by her estranged relationship with her sister Danielle; Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger who surges in internet fame when she’s caught in the crosshairs of a college trying to whitewash history; and January, who’s unsure of whether she should leave her romantic partner even after her unexpected pregnancy. The novel follows their coming of age as they navigate their careers, families, romance, meaning-making, and their relationships with one another.
First, the prose. Wow. Blew me away. Angela Flournoy’s writing captures tension and builds immersive scenes about young-ish people like Sally Rooney, while integrating the maturity and calmness of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work. With all three of these writers every sentence matters. In The Wilderness, I feel like Flournoy’s every phrase either skillfully developed her characters and their lives or fleshed out Los Angeles or New York City. Such strong and engaging writing, I was at times almost desperate to get back to this book once I put it down.
I also so deeply appreciated how this novel actually centered friendship. I really liked Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, but just to use her work as a point of comparison, I feel like a lot of her novels are romance-centric (and male-centric, to be honest). This isn’t just the case with Rooney, even other writers I enjoy like Jhumpa Lahiri default to this often. But with The Wilderness, even though most of the characters are dating someone, the novel centers their friendship genuinely and poignantly. There are immersive scenes that describe some of those day-to-day quotidian yet fundamental elements of friendship, like going out or talking about your jobs or pondering about the meaning of life. Through the book though, Flournoy is so distinctive and intentional about her characterization of each of these four women, that there were a couple of scenes, moments, and turns of phrase that literally made me cry on my sectional. Just really moving content about how your friends can really mean the whole freaking world to you and how you can love them and be loved by them so much. If you’re someone like me who is closer to some of your friends than your biological family, I suspect this book may resonate with you.
This novel reminded me of one of my favorite television shows Insecure, in the sense that it’s about four Black women’s day to day lives. The tone is a little more somber and less comedic than Insecure (though there are some funny moment sin the book), but the primacy of friendship is refreshing regardless. Sure, Monique may have been a little less fleshed out than the other characters, and the prose may have gotten a little ahead of itself in the novel’s final few pages. But to have a book that pulls off four distinct points of view at all is such an impressive feat. I cared so much about Desiree, Nakia, January, and Monique and I wanted to know more about their lives and how they are doing even when the story ended. Hats off to Flournoy and I’m excited to go back and read her debut.
First, the prose. Wow. Blew me away. Angela Flournoy’s writing captures tension and builds immersive scenes about young-ish people like Sally Rooney, while integrating the maturity and calmness of Jhumpa Lahiri’s work. With all three of these writers every sentence matters. In The Wilderness, I feel like Flournoy’s every phrase either skillfully developed her characters and their lives or fleshed out Los Angeles or New York City. Such strong and engaging writing, I was at times almost desperate to get back to this book once I put it down.
I also so deeply appreciated how this novel actually centered friendship. I really liked Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, but just to use her work as a point of comparison, I feel like a lot of her novels are romance-centric (and male-centric, to be honest). This isn’t just the case with Rooney, even other writers I enjoy like Jhumpa Lahiri default to this often. But with The Wilderness, even though most of the characters are dating someone, the novel centers their friendship genuinely and poignantly. There are immersive scenes that describe some of those day-to-day quotidian yet fundamental elements of friendship, like going out or talking about your jobs or pondering about the meaning of life. Through the book though, Flournoy is so distinctive and intentional about her characterization of each of these four women, that there were a couple of scenes, moments, and turns of phrase that literally made me cry on my sectional. Just really moving content about how your friends can really mean the whole freaking world to you and how you can love them and be loved by them so much. If you’re someone like me who is closer to some of your friends than your biological family, I suspect this book may resonate with you.
This novel reminded me of one of my favorite television shows Insecure, in the sense that it’s about four Black women’s day to day lives. The tone is a little more somber and less comedic than Insecure (though there are some funny moment sin the book), but the primacy of friendship is refreshing regardless. Sure, Monique may have been a little less fleshed out than the other characters, and the prose may have gotten a little ahead of itself in the novel’s final few pages. But to have a book that pulls off four distinct points of view at all is such an impressive feat. I cared so much about Desiree, Nakia, January, and Monique and I wanted to know more about their lives and how they are doing even when the story ended. Hats off to Flournoy and I’m excited to go back and read her debut.
June 29, 2025
This never became a cohesive whole for me, but I enjoyed myself enough that I didn't mind. Mostly I wished it was 100 pages longer, especially so we could get more about Monique and January. It's a little bit two novels smushed together--Danielle and Desiree's sister relationship deserves a novel all its own, separate from the one here that's more about friendship--and sometimes I found the movement back and forth through time more distracting than enriching. But it's worth getting past these quibbles to enjoy the richness of the novel.
The world these women inhabit feels lived in and relatable, there's a lot about class that is really rich and interesting. There's so much about expectations--the ones your family has for you, the ones you have for yourself, the ones your friends have--and deciding to accept them or subvert them.
It isn't as political as you'd expect given the time period, though I liked the chapter about Nakia's salons for political discussion a lot.
Again, the structure holds you back a little from really connecting here as much as I would like. It's a tapestry of a novel. Or rather, it's a patchwork quilt, all these separate pieces spun together, with repeating patterns and themes. That can work well and it can feel disjointed and this is both, I think. It's not what I was expecting to come next from Flournoy, but I read it very quickly and she is still the kind of writer where no matter what you think about the book, you can feel that you are in good hands the whole time you read it.
The world these women inhabit feels lived in and relatable, there's a lot about class that is really rich and interesting. There's so much about expectations--the ones your family has for you, the ones you have for yourself, the ones your friends have--and deciding to accept them or subvert them.
It isn't as political as you'd expect given the time period, though I liked the chapter about Nakia's salons for political discussion a lot.
Again, the structure holds you back a little from really connecting here as much as I would like. It's a tapestry of a novel. Or rather, it's a patchwork quilt, all these separate pieces spun together, with repeating patterns and themes. That can work well and it can feel disjointed and this is both, I think. It's not what I was expecting to come next from Flournoy, but I read it very quickly and she is still the kind of writer where no matter what you think about the book, you can feel that you are in good hands the whole time you read it.
January 18, 2026
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
★★☆☆☆
Liminal, Muted, Weightless
“Just be good! Stop meditating on it”
The wilderness is often the space of lostness - where hope is deferred and the heart can grow sick. Flournoy’s The Wilderness introduces us to five women - Desiree, Danielle, Nakia, January, and Monique - and tells us they are friends. Over roughly twenty years, across both coasts of America, we see scattered moments from their lives. The storytelling feels sparse, elusive, slightly frustrating, and occasionally sparingly beautiful - like a wilderness experience itself. A little manna here and there, but rarely enough.
What I Loved
The first chapter, “You Can’t Pronounce It,” is extraordinary.
I almost wish it existed alone as its own short story. It’s worth the price of the entire book - genuinely Pulitzer-worthy. In it, we meet a young and exhausted Desiree leading her grandfather through Europe toward his planned death. The imagery is gorgeous. Flournoy does a very risky thing with characterization in this chapter - almost absurdist at times - yet it works. It sets a tone I wish the rest of the book sustained. And the way it ends, with Desiree falling into a surreal dream and waking up to her grandfather’s death while still on the journey to said planned death?… stunning.
I also appreciate the attempt to expand the canon of “women’s stories” and, more specifically, “sad girl lit fic.”
Writers like Coco Mellors (Blue Sisters), Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation), and recently Chimamanda Adichie (Dream Count) define this space - and it’s refreshing to see Black women, who are so often stereotyped as “mono-emotional,” enter that lineage. Wilderness doesn’t completely achieve this, but it gestures toward a version of it that could have been great.
There are tender, beautiful moments sprinkled throughout.
The LA vs. New York passage is one of the most striking in the book:
“She wants to tell him that sometimes sunshine can be cruel. That cloudy days are a reprieve, and the problem with LA, and maybe even the whole Southwest, is that inevitably the light breaks through, makes the day the same as all others, even when it has no right to such uniformity. Some days feel dark and the sky should allow for this, but it rarely does out there. She’d needed more empathetic weather, she wants to say. I love LA but I don’t like it very much, she wants to say.”
Lines like this reminded me why I kept going.
Where It Falters
Catching a Vibe
The mood shifts after chapter one are destabilizing. Also the mood shifts almost from chapter to chapter. Imagine watching Friends and suddenly Phoebe gets attacked by a vampire. That’s the kind of genre wobble happening here. I couldn’t tell if Flournoy wanted contemporary fiction or a more literary mode. And yes - genres exist for a reason. Also without spoilers - something happens to one of the main characters at the end that was just senseless. It felt unearned and didn’t contribute anything to the emotional arc or pathos of the story as a whole.
For a book about friendship, the friendship is almost entirely missing.
We never see these women meet for the first time. We never see how they formed their bond- what life events pushed them together? What the strength of their friendship was? We never also see that tested in drastic ways. Their relationship feels less like friends and more like sisters who low-key don’t like each other. Honestly, calling them sisters would’ve served the book better.
The time-jumping doesn’t help.
It made the story feel thin instead of layered. I recently read God of the Woods by Liz Moore-also heavy on time shifts - and while that one was annoying for other reasons, at least the device served the story. Here,it doesn’t.
The characters felt flat.
The men are one-dimensional - they show up only to receive judgment. They’re declared bad but rarely shown to be bad. And yes, we all know men ain’t shit, but literature still requires nuance so readers can reach that conclusion themselves.
The women don’t grow either. By the end, I genuinely wondered if I’d accidentally skipped chapters, because I had unanswered questions about multiple characters. Also I didn’t like how January, one of the more nuanced women seemed to be demonized by the other women.
Final Thoughts
I wanted to love Wilderness. Instead, I persevered through it. There are delights, but I honestly can’t think of anyone in my life who would enjoy it. The restrained prose doesn’t match what the book is trying to portray, and it tries to take on so much -social justice, assisted suicide, climate change, pornography, women’s bodies, food insecurity, depression, intimacy avoidance in relationships, homelessness, inequality -but never deeply explores any of it.
Liminal, muted, weightless captures the essence of this book for me because the story constantly drifts a lot in the in-between - between genres, timelines, and emotional arcs while never fully grounding me as a reader. Its tone is muted, with restrained prose and characters who rarely reveal depth or evolution, keeping the emotional register low. And despite the book’s ambitions and scattered themes, it all feels weightless, with events (including the ending) landing without impact or resonance.
In the end, The Wilderness feels dry, sparse, and arid - like an actual wilderness. A lot of calisthenics, but not much revelation. It did not say or do anything new.
★★☆☆☆
Liminal, Muted, Weightless
“Just be good! Stop meditating on it”
The wilderness is often the space of lostness - where hope is deferred and the heart can grow sick. Flournoy’s The Wilderness introduces us to five women - Desiree, Danielle, Nakia, January, and Monique - and tells us they are friends. Over roughly twenty years, across both coasts of America, we see scattered moments from their lives. The storytelling feels sparse, elusive, slightly frustrating, and occasionally sparingly beautiful - like a wilderness experience itself. A little manna here and there, but rarely enough.
What I Loved
The first chapter, “You Can’t Pronounce It,” is extraordinary.
I almost wish it existed alone as its own short story. It’s worth the price of the entire book - genuinely Pulitzer-worthy. In it, we meet a young and exhausted Desiree leading her grandfather through Europe toward his planned death. The imagery is gorgeous. Flournoy does a very risky thing with characterization in this chapter - almost absurdist at times - yet it works. It sets a tone I wish the rest of the book sustained. And the way it ends, with Desiree falling into a surreal dream and waking up to her grandfather’s death while still on the journey to said planned death?… stunning.
I also appreciate the attempt to expand the canon of “women’s stories” and, more specifically, “sad girl lit fic.”
Writers like Coco Mellors (Blue Sisters), Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation), and recently Chimamanda Adichie (Dream Count) define this space - and it’s refreshing to see Black women, who are so often stereotyped as “mono-emotional,” enter that lineage. Wilderness doesn’t completely achieve this, but it gestures toward a version of it that could have been great.
There are tender, beautiful moments sprinkled throughout.
The LA vs. New York passage is one of the most striking in the book:
“She wants to tell him that sometimes sunshine can be cruel. That cloudy days are a reprieve, and the problem with LA, and maybe even the whole Southwest, is that inevitably the light breaks through, makes the day the same as all others, even when it has no right to such uniformity. Some days feel dark and the sky should allow for this, but it rarely does out there. She’d needed more empathetic weather, she wants to say. I love LA but I don’t like it very much, she wants to say.”
Lines like this reminded me why I kept going.
Where It Falters
Catching a Vibe
The mood shifts after chapter one are destabilizing. Also the mood shifts almost from chapter to chapter. Imagine watching Friends and suddenly Phoebe gets attacked by a vampire. That’s the kind of genre wobble happening here. I couldn’t tell if Flournoy wanted contemporary fiction or a more literary mode. And yes - genres exist for a reason. Also without spoilers - something happens to one of the main characters at the end that was just senseless. It felt unearned and didn’t contribute anything to the emotional arc or pathos of the story as a whole.
For a book about friendship, the friendship is almost entirely missing.
We never see these women meet for the first time. We never see how they formed their bond- what life events pushed them together? What the strength of their friendship was? We never also see that tested in drastic ways. Their relationship feels less like friends and more like sisters who low-key don’t like each other. Honestly, calling them sisters would’ve served the book better.
The time-jumping doesn’t help.
It made the story feel thin instead of layered. I recently read God of the Woods by Liz Moore-also heavy on time shifts - and while that one was annoying for other reasons, at least the device served the story. Here,it doesn’t.
The characters felt flat.
The men are one-dimensional - they show up only to receive judgment. They’re declared bad but rarely shown to be bad. And yes, we all know men ain’t shit, but literature still requires nuance so readers can reach that conclusion themselves.
The women don’t grow either. By the end, I genuinely wondered if I’d accidentally skipped chapters, because I had unanswered questions about multiple characters. Also I didn’t like how January, one of the more nuanced women seemed to be demonized by the other women.
Final Thoughts
I wanted to love Wilderness. Instead, I persevered through it. There are delights, but I honestly can’t think of anyone in my life who would enjoy it. The restrained prose doesn’t match what the book is trying to portray, and it tries to take on so much -social justice, assisted suicide, climate change, pornography, women’s bodies, food insecurity, depression, intimacy avoidance in relationships, homelessness, inequality -but never deeply explores any of it.
Liminal, muted, weightless captures the essence of this book for me because the story constantly drifts a lot in the in-between - between genres, timelines, and emotional arcs while never fully grounding me as a reader. Its tone is muted, with restrained prose and characters who rarely reveal depth or evolution, keeping the emotional register low. And despite the book’s ambitions and scattered themes, it all feels weightless, with events (including the ending) landing without impact or resonance.
In the end, The Wilderness feels dry, sparse, and arid - like an actual wilderness. A lot of calisthenics, but not much revelation. It did not say or do anything new.
September 28, 2025
A novel about four friends, Black millennial women, and their 20+ year friendship from their 20’s into midlife. I liked this one a lot. The characters felt so real to me. People I’ve been, people I’ve known and loved. The novel is set in both LA and NYC, two places I have lived, in the exact same timeline of the novel. The questions about fame, social media, motherhood, grief, longing, career ambition, our responsibilities to each other, and marriage felt so right on. They are the questions I have asked myself and my friends for the last 20 years. Which is to say, I really liked this book because it was hovering over so much of what I am and what I care about. Flournoy tapped into a specific ethos that is my own. There are moments the book felt slower, but intentionally so. In the ways that a life might feel slow or lulling between major moments. And the choppiness of jumping from character to character and time to time worked for me in the same way you might be deeply connected to a friend for a period of life and then drift apart and come back together. I think the form matched the story and the real lived experiences.
October 21, 2025
3/5
- The concept of this book was one I was really excited about, but the execution wasn’t my favorite. The writing style didn’t work for me because there was so much internal monologue and so many characters.
- Just because this book wasn’t for me, doesn’t mean it won’t be for you! If you enjoy lyrical writing and literary fiction, you might love this one!!
- This would be a good book for a book club because there are so many topics to discuss. Love how this book really touched on so many human experiences.
- The concept of this book was one I was really excited about, but the execution wasn’t my favorite. The writing style didn’t work for me because there was so much internal monologue and so many characters.
- Just because this book wasn’t for me, doesn’t mean it won’t be for you! If you enjoy lyrical writing and literary fiction, you might love this one!!
- This would be a good book for a book club because there are so many topics to discuss. Love how this book really touched on so many human experiences.
January 20, 2025
(4.5)
Brilliant. I love friendship novels so much, and this one was ambitious and fascinating. Four women become friends and embark on various journeys throughout the changing world from 2007-2027. I wish there were slightly more of a few of the friends, and one of them haunted the narrative.
Flournoy loves Los Angeles and the pitch perfect depiction of the city was heartwarming. I loved the chapter on motherhood as well- it felt real, lived in, and raw. I'm excited for more people to tap into this gorgeous depiction of Black womanhood, Black friendship, and the creation of chosen family.
Brilliant. I love friendship novels so much, and this one was ambitious and fascinating. Four women become friends and embark on various journeys throughout the changing world from 2007-2027. I wish there were slightly more of a few of the friends, and one of them haunted the narrative.
Flournoy loves Los Angeles and the pitch perfect depiction of the city was heartwarming. I loved the chapter on motherhood as well- it felt real, lived in, and raw. I'm excited for more people to tap into this gorgeous depiction of Black womanhood, Black friendship, and the creation of chosen family.
October 9, 2025
The Wilderness is a story following a group of Black women in their 20s as they pursue careers, relationships, and attend to family matters over the next 20 years. They move, find partners, become moms, and experience feeling stagnant. They question societal and family expectations while contending with race and class. The group reunites though the strengths of their friendships and the group dynamics continue to shift.
I wanted to love The Wilderness — It has elements I enjoy like a group of friends, family drama, and a decades-long saga, but this one did not connect for me. I found myself wanting more from some storylines, less from others, and I did not care for the ending.
I wanted to love The Wilderness — It has elements I enjoy like a group of friends, family drama, and a decades-long saga, but this one did not connect for me. I found myself wanting more from some storylines, less from others, and I did not care for the ending.
February 23, 2025
A book about how Black women do friendship. A really loving, dazzling, dynamic, delightful, depiction and description of how Black women show up for each other through ups and downs, rights and wrongs, shades and sun. Actually this turned out to be a really fine well written novel, Black Girl Magic at its finest.
A big thanks to Netgalley and Mariner books for an advanced DRC. Book will be available 09.16.25!
A big thanks to Netgalley and Mariner books for an advanced DRC. Book will be available 09.16.25!
October 22, 2025
Flournoy's Wilderness is a stethoscope pressed to the American soul, registering every irregular heartbeat of ambition, duty, and despair.
It opens with Desiree, a weary caretaker who escorts her grandfather Nolan to Paris for what he calls a graceful exit through the Swiss organization Eternus. He treats the trip as his final performance, ordering steak tartare with the conviction of a man who intends to make cholesterol his accomplice. Desiree monitors his insulin while he romanticizes his past, remarking, 'Every meal in Paris carries a secret ingredient called goodbye.'
Their journey mixes bureaucracy, nostalgia, and farce; his plan for a cinematic death dissolves somewhere between a train platform and a memory. Flournoy frames these scenes with culinary irony and emotional candor, crafting a farewell that tastes like overcooked tenderness.
Years glide forward, and the book shifts to Harlem and Los Angeles, where January scrolls through her own self-doubt. Her phone becomes a confessional booth, her screen both mirror and punishment. She writes half-finished emails to friends on holiday, drafts apologies to herself, and murmurs that 'every breath measured the price of endurance.'
Monique, a scholar with a moral compass sharp enough to wound, dismantles the hypocrisy of her university, reminding its administrators that 'they celebrate your face and forget your voice.' Nakia gambles her savings on a restaurant that cooks family recipes while burning through her patience, and Danielle, haunted by her mother's rage, discovers old journals where sorrow ferments like preserved fruit.
The book roams from kitchens to classrooms to hospitals to social feeds, and each chapter feeds the next with quiet defiance. No grand revelation arrives, only the slow accumulation of small collapses that form the texture of modern life.
Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit become coordinates of fatigue and hope. When January confronts her reflection in a train window, the city outside 'looked patient, as if waiting for her to misstep.' Desiree recalls her mother crying over rice, impying that grief seasons everything. Monique challenges the spectacle of diversity, Nakia fights for the scent of garlic to mean survival rather than debt, and January clings to her child with the same desperate affection Nolan once reserved for his final drink.
The wilderness of the title grows inward, an ecosystem of regret, endurance, and longing. The book operates as a love letter to persistence, as ledger of disappointment written with grace. Flournoy transforms despair into structure, sorrow into flavor, and every word into the echo of Nolan's truth: 'The wilderness waits inside every inheritance.'
The novel has the architecture of a mosaic, but Flournoy keeps shifting the tiles before the picture settles. The book wants to trace emotional, financial, and historical inheritance, but it does so through such dispersed lives that the current between them flickers instead of flows.
Nolan's death in Europe feels like an elaborate overture to another book altogether; Desiree's later story could almost belong to a different novel written by the same author on a different afternoon. The house money functions as a hinge, yet a creaky one, never quite carrying the emotional freight the opening promises.
Flournoy excels at writing about fatigue, moral compromise, and the quiet collapse of ideals, but her structure sacrifices coherence for texture. Each section glows on its own: the Paris material brims with absurd tenderness, the Harlem chapters offer sharp commentary on ambition and self-presentation, and the restaurant storyline hums with class tension. The problem is that these rooms rarely echo one another. I wandered through them admiring the wallpaper, wondering which door leads to the main idea.
In the end, the book feels intentionally elusive, perhaps too polite to declare what it believes. It hints at a generational wilderness, the way prosperity erodes intimacy and progress breeds dislocation. But it leaves that thesis half-buried.
You should read it for its sentences, for its humor that sneaks in through exhaustion, for its small moments of social clarity. Yet the bridge between the sections is a crossing started with conviction and abandoned mid-river. Two and a half stars sounds fair: admiration for the craft, frustration with the compass. The "trendy" political hints dropped for no apparent reason or plot justification prevented me from rounding this up.
It opens with Desiree, a weary caretaker who escorts her grandfather Nolan to Paris for what he calls a graceful exit through the Swiss organization Eternus. He treats the trip as his final performance, ordering steak tartare with the conviction of a man who intends to make cholesterol his accomplice. Desiree monitors his insulin while he romanticizes his past, remarking, 'Every meal in Paris carries a secret ingredient called goodbye.'
Their journey mixes bureaucracy, nostalgia, and farce; his plan for a cinematic death dissolves somewhere between a train platform and a memory. Flournoy frames these scenes with culinary irony and emotional candor, crafting a farewell that tastes like overcooked tenderness.
Years glide forward, and the book shifts to Harlem and Los Angeles, where January scrolls through her own self-doubt. Her phone becomes a confessional booth, her screen both mirror and punishment. She writes half-finished emails to friends on holiday, drafts apologies to herself, and murmurs that 'every breath measured the price of endurance.'
Monique, a scholar with a moral compass sharp enough to wound, dismantles the hypocrisy of her university, reminding its administrators that 'they celebrate your face and forget your voice.' Nakia gambles her savings on a restaurant that cooks family recipes while burning through her patience, and Danielle, haunted by her mother's rage, discovers old journals where sorrow ferments like preserved fruit.
The book roams from kitchens to classrooms to hospitals to social feeds, and each chapter feeds the next with quiet defiance. No grand revelation arrives, only the slow accumulation of small collapses that form the texture of modern life.
Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit become coordinates of fatigue and hope. When January confronts her reflection in a train window, the city outside 'looked patient, as if waiting for her to misstep.' Desiree recalls her mother crying over rice, impying that grief seasons everything. Monique challenges the spectacle of diversity, Nakia fights for the scent of garlic to mean survival rather than debt, and January clings to her child with the same desperate affection Nolan once reserved for his final drink.
The wilderness of the title grows inward, an ecosystem of regret, endurance, and longing. The book operates as a love letter to persistence, as ledger of disappointment written with grace. Flournoy transforms despair into structure, sorrow into flavor, and every word into the echo of Nolan's truth: 'The wilderness waits inside every inheritance.'
The novel has the architecture of a mosaic, but Flournoy keeps shifting the tiles before the picture settles. The book wants to trace emotional, financial, and historical inheritance, but it does so through such dispersed lives that the current between them flickers instead of flows.
Nolan's death in Europe feels like an elaborate overture to another book altogether; Desiree's later story could almost belong to a different novel written by the same author on a different afternoon. The house money functions as a hinge, yet a creaky one, never quite carrying the emotional freight the opening promises.
Flournoy excels at writing about fatigue, moral compromise, and the quiet collapse of ideals, but her structure sacrifices coherence for texture. Each section glows on its own: the Paris material brims with absurd tenderness, the Harlem chapters offer sharp commentary on ambition and self-presentation, and the restaurant storyline hums with class tension. The problem is that these rooms rarely echo one another. I wandered through them admiring the wallpaper, wondering which door leads to the main idea.
In the end, the book feels intentionally elusive, perhaps too polite to declare what it believes. It hints at a generational wilderness, the way prosperity erodes intimacy and progress breeds dislocation. But it leaves that thesis half-buried.
You should read it for its sentences, for its humor that sneaks in through exhaustion, for its small moments of social clarity. Yet the bridge between the sections is a crossing started with conviction and abandoned mid-river. Two and a half stars sounds fair: admiration for the craft, frustration with the compass. The "trendy" political hints dropped for no apparent reason or plot justification prevented me from rounding this up.
June 23, 2025
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.
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.
October 8, 2025
I enjoyed this book quite a lot. It drew me in to the lives of four African American friends over the course of two decades. The writing was often poetic and beautiful expressed. It deals with Millennials and growing up where at the start of your twenties, you are just trying to find your footing. Sort of, left in the Wilderness, and trying to figure out a Safe Space to Stay. Four Friends, Desiree, January, Monique, and Nakia must navigate their own level of comfort in the world and also how that translates into being a good friend over time. That Concept of how important lasting friendship is, is a thread that strongly runs through the book. The concept of developing your own path, and the degree you owe your community, your family, many BIPOC people who are seriously struggling is always an undercurrent, yet the core friendships remain. The choices each woman makes are different and don’t necessarily agree, but that does feel real and authentic. My complaint would be there were many different characters woven in and since the time line changes frequently, it left me confused at times. I did like that each woman expressed her own point of view. Overall, A Very Thought Provoking and Riveting Novel worth Reading.
Thank You NetGalley and Mariner Books for a copy of this book. I always leave reviews of books I read.
Thank You NetGalley and Mariner Books for a copy of this book. I always leave reviews of books I read.
did-not-finish
November 3, 2025 Marking this as a DNF with the giant, bold, massive, huge, gigantic, glowing, neon disclaimer that it is a me problem more than a commentary on the book itself. I've tried to pick this up a few times, and I keep restarting it and finding myself lost by the lack of chronology and volume of information.
It's the type of book that requires your undivided attention, which is unfortunately more than I can offer lately - I hope to revisit this as I hear really good things about it, but seeing this perpetually on my 'currently reading' shelf is making this title feel like it's looming over me.
It's the type of book that requires your undivided attention, which is unfortunately more than I can offer lately - I hope to revisit this as I hear really good things about it, but seeing this perpetually on my 'currently reading' shelf is making this title feel like it's looming over me.
January 4, 2025
4.5⭐
Disclaimer 1: I was given a free ARC in exchange for my honest review. Thank you to Angela Flournoy and HarperCollins! All opinions are my own.
Disclaimer 2: This is not my usual genre. I read almost exclusively jaunty, thematically straightforward fantasies; I'm not used to Literature with a capital L with all its symbolism and motifs. But I think I still understood what Flournoy was communicating, which in my opinion is the sign of an excellent author.
Wow, this book. It's the kind of story that keeps churning through your head long after you turn the final page (I reread and rereread parts 3 and 4 for this reason). The Wilderness is ostensibly the story of five women navigating early and mid adulthood together, but runs parallel with the often fraught minefield of social justice, especially the plight of homelessness in America. Flournoy does not shy away from the messiness and complexity of either, and does an incredibly thorough job. I have never seen social issues addressed this way: we see the characters conflicted over how to help, experimenting with what actually helps, digging through their motivations for trying, coping with their anger and desperation. It felt so real and raw.
The characters themselves are just that: real, raw, messy, organic. Flournoy has poured so much life into each woman. Her gorgeous prose brought a special power to the difficulties the women experience that are often not talked about -- the portayal of postpartum depression and prolapse (!!) especially cut me to the core. In the same way that Flournoy gives names and faces to the unhoused humans that we are taught to look away from, she gives color and feeling to real experiences that we rarely discuss.
Although I felt like I really knew the characters, I didn't necessarily love them, which did undercut the emotional power of the Big Event for me. That's my reason for -.5 rating. But other readers might feel differently. The details of the Big Event, when we get them, absolutely tore my heart out. And the final chapter was the most devastatingly gorgeous conclusion I think I've ever read. Pure poetry.
I read this book in two days and could not put it down. I rarely have that experience with books outside my preferred genre. The Wilderness is an earthquake and I enthusiastically recommend it.
Disclaimer 1: I was given a free ARC in exchange for my honest review. Thank you to Angela Flournoy and HarperCollins! All opinions are my own.
Disclaimer 2: This is not my usual genre. I read almost exclusively jaunty, thematically straightforward fantasies; I'm not used to Literature with a capital L with all its symbolism and motifs. But I think I still understood what Flournoy was communicating, which in my opinion is the sign of an excellent author.
Wow, this book. It's the kind of story that keeps churning through your head long after you turn the final page (I reread and rereread parts 3 and 4 for this reason). The Wilderness is ostensibly the story of five women navigating early and mid adulthood together, but runs parallel with the often fraught minefield of social justice, especially the plight of homelessness in America. Flournoy does not shy away from the messiness and complexity of either, and does an incredibly thorough job. I have never seen social issues addressed this way: we see the characters conflicted over how to help, experimenting with what actually helps, digging through their motivations for trying, coping with their anger and desperation. It felt so real and raw.
The characters themselves are just that: real, raw, messy, organic. Flournoy has poured so much life into each woman. Her gorgeous prose brought a special power to the difficulties the women experience that are often not talked about -- the portayal of postpartum depression and prolapse (!!) especially cut me to the core. In the same way that Flournoy gives names and faces to the unhoused humans that we are taught to look away from, she gives color and feeling to real experiences that we rarely discuss.
Although I felt like I really knew the characters, I didn't necessarily love them, which did undercut the emotional power of the Big Event for me. That's my reason for -.5 rating. But other readers might feel differently. The details of the Big Event, when we get them, absolutely tore my heart out. And the final chapter was the most devastatingly gorgeous conclusion I think I've ever read. Pure poetry.
I read this book in two days and could not put it down. I rarely have that experience with books outside my preferred genre. The Wilderness is an earthquake and I enthusiastically recommend it.
November 13, 2025
Now if I say The Wilderness is only a step better than this, I’d be wrong!!!
This was false advertising re: a love story about friendship
I was so excited for this book, but I think I just expected too much out of it. I watched a talk the author had with Brit Bennett and Raven Leilani, and one of the first things that struck me is while she remarked on having so many friends, the only friend she referenced by name was the famous one. Coincidentally, this famous one (Issa Rae) recently went viral for describing herself as an inconsiderate friend. Issa shared a trope I hear a lot, and one I’ve even said in the past: “we may not talk all the time, but if they need me, I’m there.” The first problem here is like shouldn’t we be able to talk to people even when all we need is companionship?!? Why is the measure of interaction with friends if your life is falling apart?
And then also, what does that mean when your life IS falling apart? As many people pointed out in response to Issa’s remark, the whole challenge is that the trust to call on someone in your times of need is built through consistently showing up for them—not just swooping in occasionally! That parachuting friendship approach well in the Insecure scene where they have to find Tiffany after she’s dealing with postpartum depression. And honestly, the main moment of support in this book is a similar situation of “let’s save our pregnant friend, drop her off with her mom, and then all go back to our lives.” But, I think what I was seeking in this book is not these occasional girls trips and meetups, but an actual discussion of what it might mean to structure your life around the pursuit of friendship. That’s how the book was discussed in the talk I saw with the author/Brit Bennett/Raven Leilani, but when I got to the end, I thought I had a different copy!!
Like this book is a series of vignettes of women whose lives intersect, but it’s being promoted as a love story between friends—I’m missing that point! During the book talk, both Britt and Raven mentioned that they loved how the romantic relationships felt peripheral to the story—I do not understand HOW they felt this way!!! There are entire romantic pursuit chapters that go by without any mention of the friends. In every chapter that IS about the friends, the narrators remark that they literally haven’t seen said people in months. This book is, at best, describing momentary points of connection between people who BARELY see each other in comparison to the time they spend with their romantic partners!!! But, I guess if the balance of your life is 95% about your husband, it feels revelatory to see a book upgrading friends from tertiary characters to secondary ones.
It really hinges on something my friend and buddy-reader Sam said: “this doesn’t feel like what we were pitched, a book about friendship…it’s a book about what straight women think friendship is.” If I can continue Sam’s argument, I think it’s a generational divide, as well. Black queer people in our late twenties were in high school when SCOTUS struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, and we’ve had over a decade of time to see what the assimilationist approach to queerness has wrought. When I compare my friends to similarly classed Black queer people just a generation before us, I think we have very different aspirations re: companionship and relational arrangements. This is not a thing of us being superior to them, it’s a thing of us having lived in a time that allows us to have hindsight. We’re seeing the isolation these people experience in their nuclear hubs, and we’re seeking MORE—particularly out of friendship.
Most of my close friends are not thinking about “how do I get a perfect job and wife and then see my friends twice a year”, we’re like is there a way to arrange our lives so we can see our friends twice a day? Maybe share meals and housework and caring responsibilities together? These days, the people I admire the most aren’t the ones who have made leaps in their careers, but who have intentionally sought out careers that allow them to finish their work by 11am, so they can spend 12-5pm helping care for their friend’s mother while she is ill. This is the question I see my people asking: how do we find ways to do life side by side, not just occasionally come together for aspirational trips and photo shoots? It’s a question this book won’t answer, and maybe one that’s unfair to even ask the author (who, from what I can tell, is a straight Millennial woman in an interracial relationship.) But, it’s the question that remains heavy on my heart.
There were some good (great?) moments
Okay, I’ve hated on the false advertising for long enough!! The truth is, I did enjoy reading this book! Angela Flournoy has excellent pacing as a writer, both on a sentence level and the overall structure of this book. Not only do things feel well-timed, but the characters and their woes felt incredibly realistic! The arguments over who can/can’t support the elders, who can/can’t afford the aspirational girls trip, and so on all felt accurate. Monique’s treatise on friendship, support, and weathering storms together from pages 199-202 is really powerful, though I would have loved to see a bit more nuance re: how to show up for people you are doing life alongside, AND how to accept the reality that we will naturally grow apart from some people. The inclusion of a chapter from a surprise narrator was another standout moment for me—I loved how that relationship hovered over the entire story, and then materialized in this deeply rewarding section close to the end.
Finally, this book’s sex/romance is the best sort of wacky!! Even when it’s morally dubious, it’s incredibly entertaining, without feeling soapy. Flournoy makes a few different attempts at discussing cross-class romantic relationships, and while the relationships themselves sometimes reminded me of the ethical trainwreck that is If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, she is much more thoughtful in their handling than Noor Naga.
Is this narrative callous towards unhoused people? I really don’t know.
I just don’t know how I feel about the focus on unhoused people in this book. Of course, I’m glad the author wasn’t ignoring the fact that THOUSANDS of people do not have shelter in places like Los Angeles and New York. But, it almost seemed like the attention that was paid to these people was tokenizing? They never become actual characters, just like one-off plot devices to spark an argument amongst the focal characters, or raise the stakes of another discussion.
I understand, from the insufferable “salons” that Nakia and Jay host, that these characters are kind of meant to be shitty people—ones who think they have all the solutions to world problems, but meaningfully do very little to address said problems themselves. I also understand that MOST of us are shitty people when it comes to expressing our values, and if we had a book written about ourselves, it might actually look like this. AT THE SAME TIME: I just feel like it’s also pretty callous to reference people’s suffering for dramatic effect in this way? IDK, it just did not sit right with me.
Like I love the larger metaphor about the wilderness being life without loved ones. The untethered life is these character’s greatest fear, that they will end up in places without belonging. Here’s one quote showing what I mean (it also shows why this aforementioned surprise chapter is really the heart of the novel):
But, it just seems like the fears of these characters are always being made in comparison to/on the backs of people with actual suffering. Like at one point she writes that Nakia, January, and the unhoused man they see are “the only Black people left in LA.” It’s just like what is this parallel even supposed to mean? Like what are you saying with that?
I do think part of the issue is tied to the author’s larger misunderstanding about her main characters’ class positions. From the book talk and different book sections, I think she believes they have more socioeconomic distinction they do. Like the “poor” friend is still able to go back to her mom’s house when her life is in shambles, a house the mom owns and is about to be able to retire in. There’s a sense of stability that all these characters have, even if it looks very different on some ends of the spectrum (large inheritances from grandparents/constant financial support from parents, vs. childcare support and free housing from parents.) Like they are still more or less on the same side of the coin—you can rely on your parents for financial and logistical support more than they rely on you. It's a classic case of looking up instead of looking down, except sometimes the author DOES look down—and then that too feels like a misunderstanding. IDK!!!!
November 2025 sidebar : Okay, I'm coming back to update this review after talking with another bestie and buddyreader, Michaela!!! She made the incredibly helpful point that the character's failure to discern class similarities is tied to their equation of emotional security and financial security. This is why they feel that Nakia is so much more well-off than the rest of them, because her family’s EMOTIONAL support leads to a wholeness that is reinforced by--but not solely about--actual money. Michaela said it best: “The feeling that you can’t go home [to live with your parents] is actually so many different feelings…because you have an emotionally difficult home to return to, you don’t realize that some people don't have a physical home to return to.” This, in a nutshell, is how I feel about The Wilderness. Flournoy sets up all these amazing pieces to explore, but she's missing the forest for the trees. Like, sure, talk about the displacement of Black people in LA, but do that with honesty and specificity! You have a character whose grandfather was literally a South Central slumlord, but this isn't deeply interrogated when Desiree reflects on her financial windfall or interacts with unhoused people. Desiree's nest egg was literally made possible because her granddad profited off his tenants for decades. When he died, she then sold these tenants' homes to investors, which more than likely led to their evictions. This cycle of predatory investment has majorly influenced LA's homelessness crisis--so at least have Desiree grapple with the contradictions!! What's the use of bringing up any of this if we can't see clearly enough to connect the dots?
Final Thoughts
I did not see how the ending would’ve happened AT ALL, and it did feel jarring because in some ways up until that point, this was still mostly a wish fulfillment novel (I’m not saying this in a derogatory way—my review of Sweet Heat is all about why we need those sorts of books!) But in The Wilderness, it’s a whiplash-inducing shift from everyone mostly getting what they want in life because they’re rich or have a rich significant other or have secretly rich grandparents to a TERRIBLE event. I guess that’s life, but it was certainly shocking, and almost felt like a new book.
But in closing, I still would recommend this—just more as a well-crafted story, and less of a moving life manual or anything. The broader context behind this is that we are in a crisis of “low-maintenance friendship”, when it’s seen as too much to be expected to speak to our people every week. We’re also in a crisis of “aesthetic friendship”, where people are struggling to develop meaningful connections because they believe it’s supposed to look exactly the way it does on TV or highly-curated IG posts: a four-person group of upwardly mobile, conventionally attractive cis women with a quota of no more than one lesbian. We need literature that can speak to these challenges, and help us subvert them—not just reinforce them and be advertised as a subversion. So, any Black novelist who wants to take another stab at this concept, you’ll have a reader in me!!!
This was false advertising re: a love story about friendship
I was so excited for this book, but I think I just expected too much out of it. I watched a talk the author had with Brit Bennett and Raven Leilani, and one of the first things that struck me is while she remarked on having so many friends, the only friend she referenced by name was the famous one. Coincidentally, this famous one (Issa Rae) recently went viral for describing herself as an inconsiderate friend. Issa shared a trope I hear a lot, and one I’ve even said in the past: “we may not talk all the time, but if they need me, I’m there.” The first problem here is like shouldn’t we be able to talk to people even when all we need is companionship?!? Why is the measure of interaction with friends if your life is falling apart?
And then also, what does that mean when your life IS falling apart? As many people pointed out in response to Issa’s remark, the whole challenge is that the trust to call on someone in your times of need is built through consistently showing up for them—not just swooping in occasionally! That parachuting friendship approach well in the Insecure scene where they have to find Tiffany after she’s dealing with postpartum depression. And honestly, the main moment of support in this book is a similar situation of “let’s save our pregnant friend, drop her off with her mom, and then all go back to our lives.” But, I think what I was seeking in this book is not these occasional girls trips and meetups, but an actual discussion of what it might mean to structure your life around the pursuit of friendship. That’s how the book was discussed in the talk I saw with the author/Brit Bennett/Raven Leilani, but when I got to the end, I thought I had a different copy!!
Like this book is a series of vignettes of women whose lives intersect, but it’s being promoted as a love story between friends—I’m missing that point! During the book talk, both Britt and Raven mentioned that they loved how the romantic relationships felt peripheral to the story—I do not understand HOW they felt this way!!! There are entire romantic pursuit chapters that go by without any mention of the friends. In every chapter that IS about the friends, the narrators remark that they literally haven’t seen said people in months. This book is, at best, describing momentary points of connection between people who BARELY see each other in comparison to the time they spend with their romantic partners!!! But, I guess if the balance of your life is 95% about your husband, it feels revelatory to see a book upgrading friends from tertiary characters to secondary ones.
It really hinges on something my friend and buddy-reader Sam said: “this doesn’t feel like what we were pitched, a book about friendship…it’s a book about what straight women think friendship is.” If I can continue Sam’s argument, I think it’s a generational divide, as well. Black queer people in our late twenties were in high school when SCOTUS struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, and we’ve had over a decade of time to see what the assimilationist approach to queerness has wrought. When I compare my friends to similarly classed Black queer people just a generation before us, I think we have very different aspirations re: companionship and relational arrangements. This is not a thing of us being superior to them, it’s a thing of us having lived in a time that allows us to have hindsight. We’re seeing the isolation these people experience in their nuclear hubs, and we’re seeking MORE—particularly out of friendship.
Most of my close friends are not thinking about “how do I get a perfect job and wife and then see my friends twice a year”, we’re like is there a way to arrange our lives so we can see our friends twice a day? Maybe share meals and housework and caring responsibilities together? These days, the people I admire the most aren’t the ones who have made leaps in their careers, but who have intentionally sought out careers that allow them to finish their work by 11am, so they can spend 12-5pm helping care for their friend’s mother while she is ill. This is the question I see my people asking: how do we find ways to do life side by side, not just occasionally come together for aspirational trips and photo shoots? It’s a question this book won’t answer, and maybe one that’s unfair to even ask the author (who, from what I can tell, is a straight Millennial woman in an interracial relationship.) But, it’s the question that remains heavy on my heart.
There were some good (great?) moments
Okay, I’ve hated on the false advertising for long enough!! The truth is, I did enjoy reading this book! Angela Flournoy has excellent pacing as a writer, both on a sentence level and the overall structure of this book. Not only do things feel well-timed, but the characters and their woes felt incredibly realistic! The arguments over who can/can’t support the elders, who can/can’t afford the aspirational girls trip, and so on all felt accurate. Monique’s treatise on friendship, support, and weathering storms together from pages 199-202 is really powerful, though I would have loved to see a bit more nuance re: how to show up for people you are doing life alongside, AND how to accept the reality that we will naturally grow apart from some people. The inclusion of a chapter from a surprise narrator was another standout moment for me—I loved how that relationship hovered over the entire story, and then materialized in this deeply rewarding section close to the end.
Finally, this book’s sex/romance is the best sort of wacky!! Even when it’s morally dubious, it’s incredibly entertaining, without feeling soapy. Flournoy makes a few different attempts at discussing cross-class romantic relationships, and while the relationships themselves sometimes reminded me of the ethical trainwreck that is If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, she is much more thoughtful in their handling than Noor Naga.
Is this narrative callous towards unhoused people? I really don’t know.
I just don’t know how I feel about the focus on unhoused people in this book. Of course, I’m glad the author wasn’t ignoring the fact that THOUSANDS of people do not have shelter in places like Los Angeles and New York. But, it almost seemed like the attention that was paid to these people was tokenizing? They never become actual characters, just like one-off plot devices to spark an argument amongst the focal characters, or raise the stakes of another discussion.
I understand, from the insufferable “salons” that Nakia and Jay host, that these characters are kind of meant to be shitty people—ones who think they have all the solutions to world problems, but meaningfully do very little to address said problems themselves. I also understand that MOST of us are shitty people when it comes to expressing our values, and if we had a book written about ourselves, it might actually look like this. AT THE SAME TIME: I just feel like it’s also pretty callous to reference people’s suffering for dramatic effect in this way? IDK, it just did not sit right with me.
Like I love the larger metaphor about the wilderness being life without loved ones. The untethered life is these character’s greatest fear, that they will end up in places without belonging. Here’s one quote showing what I mean (it also shows why this aforementioned surprise chapter is really the heart of the novel):
“She had been thrust into the wilderness of adult life, frog-marched into a deep, hard-to-navigate forest of decisions and failure and hurt, sheltered by Nolan in name only. Even now, with her job, with her girls, with Warren and the church to bolster her, there were nights she felt like every edifice she’d propped up to separate her from the elements, the wind-blasted outside of aloneness, could crumble, and she’d have nothing but her own uncovered self to brace against it. It might not take much for her to end up in the wilderness once again.” (241)
But, it just seems like the fears of these characters are always being made in comparison to/on the backs of people with actual suffering. Like at one point she writes that Nakia, January, and the unhoused man they see are “the only Black people left in LA.” It’s just like what is this parallel even supposed to mean? Like what are you saying with that?
I do think part of the issue is tied to the author’s larger misunderstanding about her main characters’ class positions. From the book talk and different book sections, I think she believes they have more socioeconomic distinction they do. Like the “poor” friend is still able to go back to her mom’s house when her life is in shambles, a house the mom owns and is about to be able to retire in. There’s a sense of stability that all these characters have, even if it looks very different on some ends of the spectrum (large inheritances from grandparents/constant financial support from parents, vs. childcare support and free housing from parents.) Like they are still more or less on the same side of the coin—you can rely on your parents for financial and logistical support more than they rely on you. It's a classic case of looking up instead of looking down, except sometimes the author DOES look down—and then that too feels like a misunderstanding. IDK!!!!
November 2025 sidebar : Okay, I'm coming back to update this review after talking with another bestie and buddyreader, Michaela!!! She made the incredibly helpful point that the character's failure to discern class similarities is tied to their equation of emotional security and financial security. This is why they feel that Nakia is so much more well-off than the rest of them, because her family’s EMOTIONAL support leads to a wholeness that is reinforced by--but not solely about--actual money. Michaela said it best: “The feeling that you can’t go home [to live with your parents] is actually so many different feelings…because you have an emotionally difficult home to return to, you don’t realize that some people don't have a physical home to return to.” This, in a nutshell, is how I feel about The Wilderness. Flournoy sets up all these amazing pieces to explore, but she's missing the forest for the trees. Like, sure, talk about the displacement of Black people in LA, but do that with honesty and specificity! You have a character whose grandfather was literally a South Central slumlord, but this isn't deeply interrogated when Desiree reflects on her financial windfall or interacts with unhoused people. Desiree's nest egg was literally made possible because her granddad profited off his tenants for decades. When he died, she then sold these tenants' homes to investors, which more than likely led to their evictions. This cycle of predatory investment has majorly influenced LA's homelessness crisis--so at least have Desiree grapple with the contradictions!! What's the use of bringing up any of this if we can't see clearly enough to connect the dots?
Final Thoughts
I did not see how the ending would’ve happened AT ALL, and it did feel jarring because in some ways up until that point, this was still mostly a wish fulfillment novel (I’m not saying this in a derogatory way—my review of Sweet Heat is all about why we need those sorts of books!) But in The Wilderness, it’s a whiplash-inducing shift from everyone mostly getting what they want in life because they’re rich or have a rich significant other or have secretly rich grandparents to a TERRIBLE event. I guess that’s life, but it was certainly shocking, and almost felt like a new book.
But in closing, I still would recommend this—just more as a well-crafted story, and less of a moving life manual or anything. The broader context behind this is that we are in a crisis of “low-maintenance friendship”, when it’s seen as too much to be expected to speak to our people every week. We’re also in a crisis of “aesthetic friendship”, where people are struggling to develop meaningful connections because they believe it’s supposed to look exactly the way it does on TV or highly-curated IG posts: a four-person group of upwardly mobile, conventionally attractive cis women with a quota of no more than one lesbian. We need literature that can speak to these challenges, and help us subvert them—not just reinforce them and be advertised as a subversion. So, any Black novelist who wants to take another stab at this concept, you’ll have a reader in me!!!
November 19, 2025
I was gifted this book through an advance copy.
This is a wonderful portrait of Black women forging their own lives, lives that look very different for each one of them, choosing to support each other even when they disagreed with each other's choices.
This is a wonderful portrait of Black women forging their own lives, lives that look very different for each one of them, choosing to support each other even when they disagreed with each other's choices.
October 19, 2025
The Wilderness follows the decades-long friendship of four Black women as they navigate love, loss, motherhood, and the shifting landscape of adulthood. I can never resist a women’s fiction novel about lifelong friends—especially one that spans years and captures both the milestones and the everyday struggles.
Each woman’s story felt distinct, but if I had to choose one that stood out, it would be Desiree’s. Her journey—losing her mother young, caring for her grandfather until his death, estranged from her sister, and finding her footing afterward—was deeply moving. Also, January, at 33 and pregnant, grappling with whether she wants the father involved in her child’s life.
The novel explores so much—career challenges, motherhood, politics, race, environmental issues, social injustice, and the complex bonds between women. I wasn’t expecting that ending, and I appreciated how Flournoy’s rich, layered writing kept me invested throughout. My only quibble was the time jumps; sometimes it took me a few pages into a chapter to figure out whose story I was in. That said, this book is a thoughtful and rewarding exploration of friendship and womanhood, with an unsettling conclusion.
Each woman’s story felt distinct, but if I had to choose one that stood out, it would be Desiree’s. Her journey—losing her mother young, caring for her grandfather until his death, estranged from her sister, and finding her footing afterward—was deeply moving. Also, January, at 33 and pregnant, grappling with whether she wants the father involved in her child’s life.
The novel explores so much—career challenges, motherhood, politics, race, environmental issues, social injustice, and the complex bonds between women. I wasn’t expecting that ending, and I appreciated how Flournoy’s rich, layered writing kept me invested throughout. My only quibble was the time jumps; sometimes it took me a few pages into a chapter to figure out whose story I was in. That said, this book is a thoughtful and rewarding exploration of friendship and womanhood, with an unsettling conclusion.
January 9, 2026
Review to come. I was up and down with this
“I do not want to raise a child in a country where people are chomping at the bit to ‘catch’ one another at their worst, to expose human beings as fallible.”
“I do not want to raise a child in a country where people are chomping at the bit to ‘catch’ one another at their worst, to expose human beings as fallible.”
September 26, 2025
THE WILDERNESS
Longlisted for the @nationalbookfoundation award for fiction and a finalist for the @kirkus_reviews prize, thank you @marinerbooks for sending me a copy to read and review.
The first chapter of this book is maybe one of the best I’ve read all year. An American Black man journeys toward assisted suicide in Europe—The Wilderness illustrates what I understand to be a pretty taboo situation, fully fleshing out the guilt around the topic. Flournoy shows us she is the master of the situation and the scene, allowing drama of four full lives to spiral out from this central point of the book at the beginning.
Nolan, the dying man, deserves his own novel. This isn’t it though—it is about four women, one of whom assisted him on his trip to Europe to meet his death. Their voices are true, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes biting and cruel, sometimes funny as dialogue in The Wilderness echoes real life—just about as good as dialogue gets. You can see how Flournoy gets inspiration from Toni Morrison and Gayl Jones in how she writes dialogue.
The stark criticism of white capitalist “storytelling” culture used as a ruse to create yields in a country where we’re told it’s okay to try to chase the dreams of turning our passions into profits—in fact, we better if we want to be able to afford a ride in an ambulance if we ever need it—is BRILLIANT.
And that’s all just the first chapter or two!
After that. Uh oh.. wait. What’s going on?
Unfortunately (oh no, here he goes) the last 80 percent of this novel, despite the terrific and terribly sharp witted commentary on culture at a rarely seen depth, was a slog to read.
The back and forth randomness talking about these four friends’ lives, then a bumbling progression into a realist dystopian situation that was insufferably boring, I’m not clear on this novel’s winningness outside Flournoy’s perfect prose and dialogue. I loved the voices here, but didn’t find the pieces in the text that I think could have made this book a more formed whole.
Longlisted for the @nationalbookfoundation award for fiction and a finalist for the @kirkus_reviews prize, thank you @marinerbooks for sending me a copy to read and review.
The first chapter of this book is maybe one of the best I’ve read all year. An American Black man journeys toward assisted suicide in Europe—The Wilderness illustrates what I understand to be a pretty taboo situation, fully fleshing out the guilt around the topic. Flournoy shows us she is the master of the situation and the scene, allowing drama of four full lives to spiral out from this central point of the book at the beginning.
Nolan, the dying man, deserves his own novel. This isn’t it though—it is about four women, one of whom assisted him on his trip to Europe to meet his death. Their voices are true, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes biting and cruel, sometimes funny as dialogue in The Wilderness echoes real life—just about as good as dialogue gets. You can see how Flournoy gets inspiration from Toni Morrison and Gayl Jones in how she writes dialogue.
The stark criticism of white capitalist “storytelling” culture used as a ruse to create yields in a country where we’re told it’s okay to try to chase the dreams of turning our passions into profits—in fact, we better if we want to be able to afford a ride in an ambulance if we ever need it—is BRILLIANT.
And that’s all just the first chapter or two!
After that. Uh oh.. wait. What’s going on?
Unfortunately (oh no, here he goes) the last 80 percent of this novel, despite the terrific and terribly sharp witted commentary on culture at a rarely seen depth, was a slog to read.
The back and forth randomness talking about these four friends’ lives, then a bumbling progression into a realist dystopian situation that was insufferably boring, I’m not clear on this novel’s winningness outside Flournoy’s perfect prose and dialogue. I loved the voices here, but didn’t find the pieces in the text that I think could have made this book a more formed whole.
September 24, 2025
Whew 😮💨 this book was something else. I thought it was beautifully written and incredibly thought-provoking.
One of my favorite things about this was the structure. The multi-POV and multiple timeline points kept me engaged the entire way through. I also loved how vividly Angela captured LA and NYC. But what really stood out was the friendship between our 4 main characters. It was messy, raw, complicated, and so honest. The 20 year span of their friendship, with all the ups and downs of careers, love, motherhood, family, found family and politics felt so real and layered.
However, I was a little confused by the ending. I get it in the sense of the big picture, especially highlighting the mistreatment of unhoused populations and the urgent need for activism and intervention. But I think I need to either re-read this book entirely or talk with others to fully process how I feel about the ending.
Other than that, this book was great. If you like beautifully written books focusing on growing up and sisterhood, you should def pick this up.
One of my favorite things about this was the structure. The multi-POV and multiple timeline points kept me engaged the entire way through. I also loved how vividly Angela captured LA and NYC. But what really stood out was the friendship between our 4 main characters. It was messy, raw, complicated, and so honest. The 20 year span of their friendship, with all the ups and downs of careers, love, motherhood, family, found family and politics felt so real and layered.
However, I was a little confused by the ending. I get it in the sense of the big picture, especially highlighting the mistreatment of unhoused populations and the urgent need for activism and intervention. But I think I need to either re-read this book entirely or talk with others to fully process how I feel about the ending.
Other than that, this book was great. If you like beautifully written books focusing on growing up and sisterhood, you should def pick this up.
October 15, 2025
I have to be honest. I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. It had good moments but overall the story fell flat. Every time I got into the story the next chapter lost me.
I think there were too many characters that weren’t fully fleshed out and the jumping timeline got so confusing. I would have loved a dual POV story about the sisters and Desiree’s friends could have been side characters? Idk. Something just didn’t work here.
I think there were too many characters that weren’t fully fleshed out and the jumping timeline got so confusing. I would have loved a dual POV story about the sisters and Desiree’s friends could have been side characters? Idk. Something just didn’t work here.
November 26, 2025
Maybe more of a 3.5 star
I saw someone else describe this book as being like a patchwork quilt, which I really feel like that is the best description of it. There is a lot of beautiful things happening here but this felt like it could have been broken up into different books that explore the individual ideas/POVs a little bit more.
Watch my full review: https://youtu.be/zsGsiy0SorY
I saw someone else describe this book as being like a patchwork quilt, which I really feel like that is the best description of it. There is a lot of beautiful things happening here but this felt like it could have been broken up into different books that explore the individual ideas/POVs a little bit more.
Watch my full review: https://youtu.be/zsGsiy0SorY
Read
November 19, 2025This is one of Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025:
Angela Flournoy's first book, The Turner House, is a fantastic novel about a family, and this follow-up is a masterful work about 20 years of friendship between Black women, who are every bit a family as well. Over two decades, January, Monique, Nakia, and Desiree traverse school, love, loss, career changes, location changes, and all the in-jokes, silliness, disagreements, and fierce loyalty that come with long friendships. Each of their paths is filled with hurt and happiness, and the novel shares their lives in dazzling sections that speed toward an ending that will break your heart. (I highly recommend the audiobook version.)
- Liberty Hardy
Angela Flournoy's first book, The Turner House, is a fantastic novel about a family, and this follow-up is a masterful work about 20 years of friendship between Black women, who are every bit a family as well. Over two decades, January, Monique, Nakia, and Desiree traverse school, love, loss, career changes, location changes, and all the in-jokes, silliness, disagreements, and fierce loyalty that come with long friendships. Each of their paths is filled with hurt and happiness, and the novel shares their lives in dazzling sections that speed toward an ending that will break your heart. (I highly recommend the audiobook version.)
- Liberty Hardy
June 17, 2025
the writing here was great — there were nuggets that made me smile. unfortunately, the plot felt muddled and became very confusing at times. i also never felt extremely connected to the characters despite spending many pages with them.
i love a slice of life novel but this was too directionless to me. 2.5/5.
i love a slice of life novel but this was too directionless to me. 2.5/5.
October 19, 2025
3.5 stars
September 19, 2025
Beautiful, imperfect novel about the friendship of four women over a couple decades. Extremely character driven.
There was genius here, but a couple of the friends' stories just seemed a tad underbaked. But a couple of the others were absolutely magnificent character studies.
There was genius here, but a couple of the friends' stories just seemed a tad underbaked. But a couple of the others were absolutely magnificent character studies.
October 5, 2025
All my reviews live at https://deedireads.com/reads.
There have been a lot of novels about friendship lately, and I feel like we keep reading all of them hoping they’ll have the exact spark that The Wilderness has. I’m so grateful to the National Book Award for making sure I knew that this one stands out in the crowd, because wow did I enjoy this book.
The book is about four women and their friendship from their 20s into middle age, spanning from the early ‘00s to a very near future. I listened to most of it on audio, so it did take me a little bit to get into it all the way (and the jumps back and forth in time were a bit tricky in that format), but once I hit 40% or so, I was completely locked in. By the end, I was engrossed in these characters and their lives and the ending — the ending!!
The choice to bring the storyline of this novel 2–3 years into the future was unexpected, but I think it worked really well. It not only made a statement but also underscored the way certain friendships are a living, breathing thing that cannot be diminished, only perhaps battered.
What a beautiful look at the messiness of love and support, the ways relationships ebb and flow, ambition and the public eye, and so much more. I have a feeling this one is going to stick with me for a long time.
Content and trigger warnings
Police brutality; Grief; Pregnancy / postpartum medical issues; Death
There have been a lot of novels about friendship lately, and I feel like we keep reading all of them hoping they’ll have the exact spark that The Wilderness has. I’m so grateful to the National Book Award for making sure I knew that this one stands out in the crowd, because wow did I enjoy this book.
The book is about four women and their friendship from their 20s into middle age, spanning from the early ‘00s to a very near future. I listened to most of it on audio, so it did take me a little bit to get into it all the way (and the jumps back and forth in time were a bit tricky in that format), but once I hit 40% or so, I was completely locked in. By the end, I was engrossed in these characters and their lives and the ending — the ending!!
The choice to bring the storyline of this novel 2–3 years into the future was unexpected, but I think it worked really well. It not only made a statement but also underscored the way certain friendships are a living, breathing thing that cannot be diminished, only perhaps battered.
What a beautiful look at the messiness of love and support, the ways relationships ebb and flow, ambition and the public eye, and so much more. I have a feeling this one is going to stick with me for a long time.
Content and trigger warnings
Police brutality; Grief; Pregnancy / postpartum medical issues; Death
November 6, 2025
The title of this book is very fitting, The Wilderness relates to the craziness of life experiences and while reading this it feels like you're thrown into the wilderness with not much sense of direction.
I found some of the dialog between the characters witty and amusing. The mention of some artists and songs that the characters liked or was playing in the club gave me a feeling of nostalgia. The author's writing comes across very real, beautiful, and poetic. Reading this book felt more like a compilation of stories than one cohesive story. Every chapter is set during a different time and might involve one, two, or maybe several of the five main characters. I found myself having a challenging time figuring out which character was being focused on at the start of each chapter.
I struggled to feel fully invested in any of the characters and was left hoping there would have been more to Danielle and Desiree's story, it felt incomplete.
**Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to listen to this advance copy in exchange for my honest review.
I found some of the dialog between the characters witty and amusing. The mention of some artists and songs that the characters liked or was playing in the club gave me a feeling of nostalgia. The author's writing comes across very real, beautiful, and poetic. Reading this book felt more like a compilation of stories than one cohesive story. Every chapter is set during a different time and might involve one, two, or maybe several of the five main characters. I found myself having a challenging time figuring out which character was being focused on at the start of each chapter.
I struggled to feel fully invested in any of the characters and was left hoping there would have been more to Danielle and Desiree's story, it felt incomplete.
**Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to listen to this advance copy in exchange for my honest review.
August 14, 2025
4.5 | This story follows a group of friends over the course of 20 years. Overtime we see them grow and evolve together from their early 20s to their 50s. This story is about friendship, sisterhood, and the complexities of being a Black woman. It reads almost like a collections of short stories for each woman that is woven together for one big story overall - it works really well.
While reading this all I could think about were shows like Girlfriends and Insecure, two shows that showcase friendships between Black women. There’s a lot of love between them, but relationships can be complex. These women were very different from each other in so many ways - different lifestyles, beliefs, goals, etc. They handled their relationships different. They were just all very different, but similar enough to really bond. It worked.
We see who they were as individuals even outside of the group and how certain circumstances affected the group and their relationships. There are times when I wanted to know a little more about certain characters. Some were a lot more fleshed out than others, but even with the little I got I still feel like I learned enough to know who they are. They’re not perfect by far, but they grow together so much.
I felt really connected to these women. All of them were endearing, even when I didn’t understand or agree with their decisions. It was a beautiful showcase of being human to me. Seeing this on a display through an individual and a group basis really brought it all together. Even the character that was indirectly a part of the story (most of the time) felt close. Initially I didn’t understand her, but once we were able to get her POV, I was able to really see her. I think we need more stories that showcase examples of friendship/sisterhood where we can the see the good and the bad.
This story will make you laugh and it will make you cry. It will also make you reflect often. You will probably feel nostalgia too, especially if you’re a millennial.
I will say the ending of this book was a little weird for me and I’m not sure how I feel about it still, but overall I really enjoyed going on this journey with these characters.
Thank you Mariner Books for the ARC!
While reading this all I could think about were shows like Girlfriends and Insecure, two shows that showcase friendships between Black women. There’s a lot of love between them, but relationships can be complex. These women were very different from each other in so many ways - different lifestyles, beliefs, goals, etc. They handled their relationships different. They were just all very different, but similar enough to really bond. It worked.
We see who they were as individuals even outside of the group and how certain circumstances affected the group and their relationships. There are times when I wanted to know a little more about certain characters. Some were a lot more fleshed out than others, but even with the little I got I still feel like I learned enough to know who they are. They’re not perfect by far, but they grow together so much.
I felt really connected to these women. All of them were endearing, even when I didn’t understand or agree with their decisions. It was a beautiful showcase of being human to me. Seeing this on a display through an individual and a group basis really brought it all together. Even the character that was indirectly a part of the story (most of the time) felt close. Initially I didn’t understand her, but once we were able to get her POV, I was able to really see her. I think we need more stories that showcase examples of friendship/sisterhood where we can the see the good and the bad.
This story will make you laugh and it will make you cry. It will also make you reflect often. You will probably feel nostalgia too, especially if you’re a millennial.
I will say the ending of this book was a little weird for me and I’m not sure how I feel about it still, but overall I really enjoyed going on this journey with these characters.
Thank you Mariner Books for the ARC!
December 8, 2025
My favorite TV formula is what I have dubbed as the “four friend formula”. I think it’s a core part of pop culture girl and womanhood to have a show running with four different archetypes of the modern woman that the audience can identify with. As a reader, I have been yearning for a book with this formula. So as you can imagine The Wilderness made it to the top of my priority list. I went it expecting a Insecure-ish novel with a lot more character depth. While The Wilderness didn’t abide to my favorite parts of this formula, we were introduced to a cast of characters maneuvering through life and how they fit in each other’s lives.
From the first chapter I knew this was going to be something different than I was expecting. Which was a book on deep sisterhood & their connection to each other. Instead we met these characters individually at different stages in their lives, and got to know how they fit in each other’s lives. Not a true origin story of how they became to close, but thrown into their lives, learning how they fit. As I read it felt like such a realistic approach. They felt so authentic to my own friend group. I being to see myself in every one of them which is what I wanted to walk away with.
The ending? Idk what that was, really. Almost felt genre bending. The dystopian twist threw me off and out of the story. I’m still trying to process exactly what the author was trying to do there.
From the first chapter I knew this was going to be something different than I was expecting. Which was a book on deep sisterhood & their connection to each other. Instead we met these characters individually at different stages in their lives, and got to know how they fit in each other’s lives. Not a true origin story of how they became to close, but thrown into their lives, learning how they fit. As I read it felt like such a realistic approach. They felt so authentic to my own friend group. I being to see myself in every one of them which is what I wanted to walk away with.
The ending? Idk what that was, really. Almost felt genre bending. The dystopian twist threw me off and out of the story. I’m still trying to process exactly what the author was trying to do there.
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