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Will's Wake
Under redwoods older than empires, 11-year-old Shree’s dreams are sinking fast. Power is down, food has run out, and a river of mud has erased the only road of escape. Shree is alone with her father. Her father, who is hiding the worst of a growing storm. As the rains fall and a chorus of voices torments him, whispers begin urging Tony to kill his daughter.
Wendy and Shree first bonded over the pain of dysfunctional families. Yet when Shree runs away from her angry, lying mother and disappears with her mythical father, Wendy is left alone to face her tormentors. Can a mysterious envelope from far away shield her from her abusive brother or the venom of her classmates? Will their secret letters be enough?
Part descent into psychosis, part ode to friendship, Will’s Wake is a coming-of-age novel that asks if two children can untangle emotions and intentions to rescue each other when those they should look up to fall short.
WARNING: Despite the two main characters being tweens, this novel is not aimed at children, as it wrestles with the nightmare of psychosis, drug use, suicide, and other mature topics.
Wendy and Shree first bonded over the pain of dysfunctional families. Yet when Shree runs away from her angry, lying mother and disappears with her mythical father, Wendy is left alone to face her tormentors. Can a mysterious envelope from far away shield her from her abusive brother or the venom of her classmates? Will their secret letters be enough?
Part descent into psychosis, part ode to friendship, Will’s Wake is a coming-of-age novel that asks if two children can untangle emotions and intentions to rescue each other when those they should look up to fall short.
WARNING: Despite the two main characters being tweens, this novel is not aimed at children, as it wrestles with the nightmare of psychosis, drug use, suicide, and other mature topics.
378 pages, Paperback
First published October 3, 2025
About the author
Timothy Dreszer
1 bookGrowing up in Houston, within NASA's pious penumbra, Timothy endured mundane family trauma when his parents divorced, and he was forced to live with his monster, er, mother against his will. Not until his older brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia did Tim recognize the poetic humor in his own ‘tortured’ life. Escaping family and suffocating humidity, he found refuge in the redwoods on the edge of the Pacific and distraction in nature, science, and engineering. This led from psychology to biology to bioinformatics via degrees and a career along the way. While his head was occupied with writing code and scientific papers, his heart kept beating out stories colored by complicating human emotions. Though he anticipated living alone with his cat, he has a wife and two kids who have distracted him from that fate.
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January 5, 2026
Will’s Wake opens with a bold structural choice, with the early chapters unfolding in reverse chronology. This is a device I’ve encountered in several recent novels, and when executed well it can be extremely effective. Here, however, it didn’t always land for me. The reverse structure is paired with a fair amount of repetition and digressive material, which sometimes blunted the impact rather than sharpening it.
Much of Shree’s internal life is mediated through her imaginary companions, Mr Trains and Chaser. While this is an inventive way of externalising her thoughts, I found their contributions often too extended and impressionistic to clearly illuminate her emotional state. When the narrative then shifted back into forward motion, the transition felt abrupt, and later returns to the reverse structure—introduced without much signalling—left me occasionally disoriented and checking chapter dates to re-anchor myself.
Although the author is clear that Will’s Wake is not intended as YA fiction, I often felt it read that way in tone and focus. There are long, detailed passages depicting the childhood lives of Shree, Wendy, and their friends, presented as vivid snapshots rather than plot-driven scenes. Other writers—Stephen King in It, for example—use similar childhood vignettes to steadily advance the narrative and deepen thematic tension. Here, I felt these sections sometimes lingered too long without clearly moving the story forward. Some tighter editing could help improve momentum and also catch the occasional technical slip (for example, “balling” instead of “bawling”).
That said, Timothy Dreszer is unquestionably a skilled writer. His dialogue is natural and convincing, and many individual scenes are well shaped and engaging. Where the novel struggled for me was in its pacing. By around the midpoint, I found myself uncertain about the narrative direction, with characters circling one another in ways that felt static rather than cumulative.
My final piece of feedback would be restraint at the sentence level. The prose is often ambitious and energetic, but there are moments where similes and heightened language feel overworked. An early scene involving a wasp trapped in a car, for instance, is vividly written but extended with imagery that seems disproportionate to its narrative importance, drawing attention away from the story rather than into it.
Despite these reservations, there is real talent on display here, and readers who enjoy character-driven fiction with a strong focus on interiority may well find more to admire than I did. And for the record: working Sound Chaser by Yes into a novel is always going to earn my respect. Well done, that man.
I read Will’s Wake as an ARC provided through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. All opinions are my own.
Much of Shree’s internal life is mediated through her imaginary companions, Mr Trains and Chaser. While this is an inventive way of externalising her thoughts, I found their contributions often too extended and impressionistic to clearly illuminate her emotional state. When the narrative then shifted back into forward motion, the transition felt abrupt, and later returns to the reverse structure—introduced without much signalling—left me occasionally disoriented and checking chapter dates to re-anchor myself.
Although the author is clear that Will’s Wake is not intended as YA fiction, I often felt it read that way in tone and focus. There are long, detailed passages depicting the childhood lives of Shree, Wendy, and their friends, presented as vivid snapshots rather than plot-driven scenes. Other writers—Stephen King in It, for example—use similar childhood vignettes to steadily advance the narrative and deepen thematic tension. Here, I felt these sections sometimes lingered too long without clearly moving the story forward. Some tighter editing could help improve momentum and also catch the occasional technical slip (for example, “balling” instead of “bawling”).
That said, Timothy Dreszer is unquestionably a skilled writer. His dialogue is natural and convincing, and many individual scenes are well shaped and engaging. Where the novel struggled for me was in its pacing. By around the midpoint, I found myself uncertain about the narrative direction, with characters circling one another in ways that felt static rather than cumulative.
My final piece of feedback would be restraint at the sentence level. The prose is often ambitious and energetic, but there are moments where similes and heightened language feel overworked. An early scene involving a wasp trapped in a car, for instance, is vividly written but extended with imagery that seems disproportionate to its narrative importance, drawing attention away from the story rather than into it.
Despite these reservations, there is real talent on display here, and readers who enjoy character-driven fiction with a strong focus on interiority may well find more to admire than I did. And for the record: working Sound Chaser by Yes into a novel is always going to earn my respect. Well done, that man.
I read Will’s Wake as an ARC provided through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. All opinions are my own.
Displaying 1 of 1 review