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Wildcat
An uproariously funny, surprisingly touching story of one woman's journey through motherhood and female friendship, in a society that plays fast and loose with information
New mother, aspiring writer, and former shopgirl Leanne has lost her way. As she struggles with both her grief and the haze of new motherhood, it also becomes clear that her best friend, the default queen of East Side Los Angeles, Regina Mark, might not actually be a friend at all.
As Leanne begins to investigate and undermine Regina, she also strikes up an unexpected friendship with the lauded writer Maxine Hunter. Feeling frustrated and invisible next to Regina's wealth and social standing, Leanne seeks security wherever she can find it, whether that's by researching whether she should vaccinate her son, in listening to the messages she thinks her father is sending from beyond the grave, or in holding her own against a petulant student in her creative writing class. Most of all, however, she looks for it within Maxine, who offers Leanne something new.
With a keen eye for the trappings of privilege, class, and the performative nature of contemporary domestic life, Morris's tender and wicked debut shows us a woman who bucks against the narrative she's been fed, only to find power in herself and the truth that emerges.
New mother, aspiring writer, and former shopgirl Leanne has lost her way. As she struggles with both her grief and the haze of new motherhood, it also becomes clear that her best friend, the default queen of East Side Los Angeles, Regina Mark, might not actually be a friend at all.
As Leanne begins to investigate and undermine Regina, she also strikes up an unexpected friendship with the lauded writer Maxine Hunter. Feeling frustrated and invisible next to Regina's wealth and social standing, Leanne seeks security wherever she can find it, whether that's by researching whether she should vaccinate her son, in listening to the messages she thinks her father is sending from beyond the grave, or in holding her own against a petulant student in her creative writing class. Most of all, however, she looks for it within Maxine, who offers Leanne something new.
With a keen eye for the trappings of privilege, class, and the performative nature of contemporary domestic life, Morris's tender and wicked debut shows us a woman who bucks against the narrative she's been fed, only to find power in herself and the truth that emerges.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published February 22, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 163 reviews
March 7, 2022
3.5 Stars: “Wildcat” is an interesting look at new motherhood for women in their 30’s, well, affluent women in their 30’s. As a woman who had her children in my middle and late 30’s, I could relate to most of the struggles that the protagonist, Leanne, endured. Author Amelia Morris is very clever in providing witty reflections and observations on motherhood.
Morris doesn’t write a story about all the difficulties of being a mother, all the disappointments, the joylessness, utter exhaustion. Personally, I found what she emphasized was the beauty of being a mom in those small moments: the smell of your baby’s head; the smiles of contentment; the joy of discovery; the swell in your heart when you see your baby sleeping. She hides these little observations in everyday moments.
Yet there is tension in the story. I wasn’t sure where this was leading. Will someone’s baby die? Will someone divorce? Will someone be in legal problems?
One of the tensions comes early in the novel concerning one of her best friends of ten years, Regina. It took motherhood for Leanne to see how vacuous and mean Regina is. I am uncomfortable with the way Morris chose for Leanne to handle Regina. I found Leanne’s behavior untoward; some may differ with my opinion leading this to be a great book club discussion.
Saying that, this is a story that has many humorous moments. Additionally, there are brilliant insights regarding the American family, especially one of divorce. Leanne’s parents divorced when she was young and had an uneasy relationship with her father (who dies early in the story). Leanne never gelled with her father’s second family and that tension holds throughout the story. Leanne’s relationship with her own mother is sweet, funny, exasperating, and sometimes difficult. The stress of working and being a mother of an infant is explored. The way Morris tells her story leaves the reader with some uneasiness, and then she writes some witty scene to keep us vested in the story.
I enjoyed Morris’s take on motherhood. She shows the pressures of motherhood including isolation and competitiveness. I believe this would be a great book club read because there are so many issues to discuss. I liked that it left me a bit uneasy.
Morris doesn’t write a story about all the difficulties of being a mother, all the disappointments, the joylessness, utter exhaustion. Personally, I found what she emphasized was the beauty of being a mom in those small moments: the smell of your baby’s head; the smiles of contentment; the joy of discovery; the swell in your heart when you see your baby sleeping. She hides these little observations in everyday moments.
Yet there is tension in the story. I wasn’t sure where this was leading. Will someone’s baby die? Will someone divorce? Will someone be in legal problems?
One of the tensions comes early in the novel concerning one of her best friends of ten years, Regina. It took motherhood for Leanne to see how vacuous and mean Regina is. I am uncomfortable with the way Morris chose for Leanne to handle Regina. I found Leanne’s behavior untoward; some may differ with my opinion leading this to be a great book club discussion.
Saying that, this is a story that has many humorous moments. Additionally, there are brilliant insights regarding the American family, especially one of divorce. Leanne’s parents divorced when she was young and had an uneasy relationship with her father (who dies early in the story). Leanne never gelled with her father’s second family and that tension holds throughout the story. Leanne’s relationship with her own mother is sweet, funny, exasperating, and sometimes difficult. The stress of working and being a mother of an infant is explored. The way Morris tells her story leaves the reader with some uneasiness, and then she writes some witty scene to keep us vested in the story.
I enjoyed Morris’s take on motherhood. She shows the pressures of motherhood including isolation and competitiveness. I believe this would be a great book club read because there are so many issues to discuss. I liked that it left me a bit uneasy.
April 25, 2022
I don't know why I kept reading this one. It's mainly about a group of millennials who get into petty fights thanks to their incessant reliance on social media. Leanne, 34 and a new mother, has a falling out with Regina, her former best friend, in part because Regina is an anti-vaxer--she refuses to have her child vaccinated and writes a blog about her theories. Leanne is wholly unlikeable. It feels a lot as though some of her problems with Regina stem from jealousy of her former friend's high profile media presence. Leanne does several unethical things to help others see that Regina is not as amazing as she appears to be, including hacking into her social media accounts. The whole story made me think of two high school girls vying to see who was most popular.
April 10, 2022
I am reluctantly giving this book 3 stars. Only because I finished it but in all honesty, it wasn’t that good. The pettiness of the main character was over the top. The book description describes this book as “uproariously funny and surprisingly touching”.
I found it to be neither. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
I found it to be neither. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
April 18, 2022
WOW!! What a book.
December 23, 2021
Captures the first months of motherhood, the insecurity of friendships, and the many circles of LA, all in an impeccably-paced novel that will make you marvel at Morris's ability to present the slippery moral issues of our modern lives with tenderness, humor, and style.
March 16, 2022
this book focuses on unimportant affluent white women problems and the need to remain friends with people you dont necessarily like or care for just to continuing benefiting from the elite and rather fake circle. the main plot follows a woman who becomes obsessed with trying to sabotage someone in this group she considered a “best friend”. i find stories like this tend to wrap up abruptly making the book fall short. i do have to say the chaoticness of this character in the first half had me smiling to myself, but like the plot it too slowly dissolved.
April 17, 2022
This has been lingering on my eARC list for a while and I finally read it! It's about motherhood in your 30s and how relationships change with the added dimension of LA's classist culture and a pretty strong anti-vax storyline, pre-covid.
There's a bit of a revenge plot that made me not 100% on the protagonist's side but I guess at least she's not just letting life happen to her. There are also some funny and/or absurd moments.
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to the title via NetGalley. It came out 22 February, 2022.
There's a bit of a revenge plot that made me not 100% on the protagonist's side but I guess at least she's not just letting life happen to her. There are also some funny and/or absurd moments.
Thanks to the publisher for providing access to the title via NetGalley. It came out 22 February, 2022.
March 26, 2022
I sought out this book because I thought it would be amusing. Instead, it was moronic and vapid, a total waste of time. In addition, the author found it necessary to infuse her politics into the “story,” which just added to the punishment of reading this book. The only good part was that I got it from the library so I did not spend good money on this nonsensical drivel.
July 5, 2022
I really, really hated this book and wanted to give it 1 star. But I finished it, and the writing itself wasn't bad, so I had to bump it to a 2. That said, the main character is the literal worst. She made crappy decision after crappy decision and somehow suffered zero consequences. I kept waiting for it to all come crashing down on her, but as the book progressed, I slowly realized it wasn't that kind of book. No, this book wanted us to see the main characters shitty decisions as a part of her 𝓳𝓸𝓾𝓻𝓷𝓮𝔂 and therefore completely justified. Nevermind that she dropped a (best?) friend without even having a sober conversation with her and then intentionally sabotaged her reputation (again without ever even bringing up her concerns with said friend) but it's ok because her friend was a Bad Person™. Ugh.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 28, 2022
Nauseating Vapid and shallow garbage. Will appeal to people of like emptiness who seek assurance and normalization of vapid shallow lives. SO Petty
reads like an ad copy for status quo pharmaceutical companies doubling down on vaccine injury is urban legend and antivax is fringe. Hush now you soft headed hoipoloi. Listen to the good fictional doctor repeating the Condescending, One dimensional narrative. social networks, trolling, petty passive aggressive vapid lives. I've never deleted a book literally mid narration, this was a first.
I am honestly angry that this kind of drivel had been brought into existence.
reads like an ad copy for status quo pharmaceutical companies doubling down on vaccine injury is urban legend and antivax is fringe. Hush now you soft headed hoipoloi. Listen to the good fictional doctor repeating the Condescending, One dimensional narrative. social networks, trolling, petty passive aggressive vapid lives. I've never deleted a book literally mid narration, this was a first.
I am honestly angry that this kind of drivel had been brought into existence.
May 8, 2022
This is my 65th book of the year and the second one to get 1 star. I literally do not know where to start with this book. So, nothing happens that is my first complaint. This book is not about motherhood, it is about a woman who just so happens to be a mother. In the end, my view was that it was about an insecure white middle aged affluent woman pissed that another white middle aged affluent woman was a different kind of shitty person than her. I have no idea if the main character is supposed to be likeable (she isn't), but at some point her cattiness starts to grate on you, and indifference sets in about what happens to her. I rarely DNF books so I suffered through this, don't be me.
December 28, 2021
So another "Going in blind book" for me. Leanne is a new mom struggling with the death of her father, a new baby and the pressure of keeping up with the facade of her so called friend on social media. I usually love reading books about parenthood but this one was just too much cattiness for me to find it relatable.
May 1, 2022
A woman who realizes her friend is a shallow, elitist snob responds by…acting like a shallow, elitist snob. I’m not sure what the larger point was supposed to be but it probably wasn’t “every single character is either a terrible person or a cardboard nonentity.”
December 22, 2021
Funny, thoughtful, honest, inventive and original.
October 4, 2022
Oh, this was fun. I am full of glee that there’s a book poking fun at a very identifiable, moneyed, clique-ish, elder millennial class of LA women who hawk luxury minimalist goods that they have nominally designed or curated from locales meant to signal how authentic they are. I cackled at the outfits that Morris uses as signifiers, the muted linen shirts and billowing pants, and especially when Leanne’s mom says, “You do realize you dress just like them. I really don’t understand these jumpsuits.” The book is also unexpectedly sweet and I thought there was a lot of sensitivity in Leanne’s character, her honesty about her complicity and her privilege, despite her insecurity around her nepotism baby friends. Leanne’s bad online behavior is fun, an absurdist what-if scenario that plays out in an age-appropriate manner. That she takes these actions at all is probably the least realistic part of the book, which I didn’t mind at all.
April 22, 2022
Not "uproariously funny," not actually funny at all so If you're expecting some fun laughs, this is not the book. It does a nice job of capturing the rapturous new parent feeling and that kept me going. But the mean-spirited main protagonist, who seems intent destroying her her former best friend with real manipulation, is a strange hero. Is she meant to be unlikeable? She's horrid to her quirky student and comes off as just nasty. I think the reader is supposed to dislike Earl too, but he doesn't seem nearly as bad as the teacher. And then her fascination with the new best friend-it didn't track for me. Seemed like she went from one bossy friend to another. The women all seemed like they were just grown up middle school mean girls-all of them.
June 26, 2022
Started around 11pm last night. Finished in bed today around noon. And not because I found it enjoyable. I browse read the book to get to the sections concerning Regina and Leanne’s friendship, if you could call it one. I was hoping for a deeper exploration of female friendship and found this to be a shallow skim on what women want and need in those relationships. Both characters were vile, manipulative and judgmental of each other. The book read like the movie Don’t Look Up. Like it’s written for like-minded, “right-minded” people. Which feels like a judgment on the reader, are YOU “right-minded.” The argument feels flimsy though. Sneaking in data to “correct” the anti-vaxxers while pointing to their stupidity. Erstwhile, Leanne’s as manipulative, shallow and self-conscious as her frenemy. Not my cuppa.
Too many other relationship storylines that were also flimsy and you wonder, what was the point of those though? Character Leanne makes everyone around her look shitty and secondary. Character Leanne seems very un-self aware and never seems to arrive at any self-awareness through the length of the book. At the end she just tells Regina, I gotta get out of this conversation? Welcome to your 30s girl. Do whatever you want - no one is holding you to it. You no longer jive with a friend or have grown in different directions? Maybe just tell her and move on rather than working to sabotage her because you feel slighted and disagree with her politics. You wrote a book and didn’t have advance convos with the people you wrote about, who might be affected by it? But you kept receipts. Hard to have empathy for a character that’s brazenly foolish and hasn’t yet learned how to have hard and honest conversations that involve a greater degree of self-awareness and compassion for others. Buck up, honey.
Too many other relationship storylines that were also flimsy and you wonder, what was the point of those though? Character Leanne makes everyone around her look shitty and secondary. Character Leanne seems very un-self aware and never seems to arrive at any self-awareness through the length of the book. At the end she just tells Regina, I gotta get out of this conversation? Welcome to your 30s girl. Do whatever you want - no one is holding you to it. You no longer jive with a friend or have grown in different directions? Maybe just tell her and move on rather than working to sabotage her because you feel slighted and disagree with her politics. You wrote a book and didn’t have advance convos with the people you wrote about, who might be affected by it? But you kept receipts. Hard to have empathy for a character that’s brazenly foolish and hasn’t yet learned how to have hard and honest conversations that involve a greater degree of self-awareness and compassion for others. Buck up, honey.
March 25, 2022
I really really enjoyed WILDCAT by Amelia Morris. It was witty, entertaining, funny, and delightfully modern. Set amidst a volatile antivax disagreement by two friends (pre-COVID specifically), Morris is able to capture the unique trauma of toxic friendships as well as the back-stabby, gossipy fun female friendships can devolve into. It is also a poignant look at motherhood and grief, social status and creativity. This book may not be for everyone, but I truly enjoyed it. It is wonderfully contemporary and Morris’ writing just spoke so clearly to me. It is both hilarious and touching and truly that is what I always look for in a good book. Highly recommended you check it out if this speaks to you!
May 22, 2022
I really wanted to like this because I like the author’s Instagram presence (funny given the book’s commentary about influencers and social media), but I just couldn’t get myself to care about any of the characters. I appreciated the main character’s struggle with identity and new motherhood, but she just seemed so self centered in a way that I found tiring. And I didn’t like that the main character’s self acceptance partly required the takedown of her nemesis (even though the nemesis really was awful).
June 24, 2022
The phrase "uproariously funny" is used in the description of this book, and I'm still trying to figure out why. Two women who are old enough to know better try to take each other down. There is a strange flirtation with her mentor. The husband is handsome and affable and barely exists. There's just no real story here. I think if the reader could see anything from another character's point of view, it may help? It was a quick read, but not a great read. Plus, the author gave herself a 5-star review, which made me cringe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2022
Ick. As much as this book wants me to hate Regina, Leanne the sociopath is worse. Her seething envy leads her down some crazy paths - are we supposed to be cheering her on? I kept reading because I thought for sure there would be some comeuppance for her. Nope - instead, the rumors she spreads and the messages she sends POSING AS SOMEONE ELSE come back to bite antivax frenemy Regina in the butt. And *Regina* is the crazy one?
Detestable, obsessive protagonist aside, this book is all over the place. And the thing with Maxine and the cats - WTF was even the point of that?
Detestable, obsessive protagonist aside, this book is all over the place. And the thing with Maxine and the cats - WTF was even the point of that?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 5, 2022
I was disappointed! Almost wish I didn't read the book.
March 19, 2022
Although, if we’re being honest…this book was fun to read despite the self absorbed, spoiled annoying characters. It’s a story of grown up mean girls, who really haven’t grown up. They are married, with new babies, but all so insecure and wrapped up in superficial nonsense through their social media accounts, it’s as if they are still in middle school. The main character, Leanne, a writer, is highly critical of everyone while still feeling hurt from every perceived wrong from her family and friends; mom, dad, stepmother, best friend…She seems unable to just move on and live her own life, until she finally meets a friend she admires, Maxine, who encourages her to finally let go of all of her resentments and feeling victimized. There is also a small undercurrent message of vaccines and the greater social good. Overall, this gave me a bit of insight into that world of imagined slights and holding onto hurts and resentments. I hope Leanne can learn a bit from Hank, and James, about accepting herself and enjoying life, moving forward, one moment, one day at a time.
March 17, 2025
…. Only redeeming quality is the semi-realistic relationship and moments between author and mom and that Brookline Booksmith had this on clearance
March 6, 2022
Loved it! Stopped everything I was doing and read it in two sittings.
May 9, 2022
I picked up this book after seeing it starred in People's Books of the Week. I love a good take on LA culture, so I was interested to give this one a try. Not sure if an agent pulled some strings or what, but this book just left me baffled and annoyed. The writing style was choppy - chapters would end so abruptly that I would turn the page expecting a story line to continue, only to find that it'd been cut off and a new chapter began. So many chapters ended on lines that kept me wondering if they were supposed to be auspicious, only to come to nothing. The protagonist was unsympathetic - sure, Regina didn't seem that great, but her "crimes" didn't seem to warrant the actions L took against her. Just seemed majorly petty. L in general just seems like a brat - the letter she writes to MH in the beginning about her neighbor just left me feeling so gross. Why are you commenting on this random woman's choices about kids??? This also seemed like a vehicle for the author to voice her concerns about anti-vaxxers, which is all well and good, but felt so heavy handed and preachy throughout, especially when the journalist writing the story on Regina at the end of the book reeealllyyy lays on the facts - seemed like a personal thing for the author to lay on it so thick. The cat thing felt like the author wanted it to seem like some avant garde art moment, but just fell flat to me. Not to mention the tension between L and MH that came to nothing (like so many other plot lines in this book...). Lastly, the crepe thing was so completely unbelievable that my eyes almost rolled out of my head. Giving this one an UGH.
March 29, 2022
Billed as an ‘uproariously funny’ story of one woman’s journey through motherhood and female friendship. Hmmmmm. Not sure I read the same work. Pleasant with some humor maybe. Aspiring author Leanne is inexplicably friends with apparent mean girl Regina George (oops sorry, Regina Mark). I kept waiting for something….more to happen. There was a set up that begged for accidental emails or inadvertent posts that did not pay off, and some weird episode with a house full of cats that made no sense to the plot. Feel free to skip.
April 3, 2022
This book was featured in People magazine, so I thought I’d go out of my normal genres and try it. Seriously, such a bore. I would sum it up as women in their mid 30’s acting like middle schoolers…worried about social media, who is friends with who, throwing tantrums and sabotaging each other, and debating baby vaccines. It was all I could do to finish it, but I’m not a quitter.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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