Wild Rose

by Lucy Winton

Will she survive among the wolves?

Seventeen-year-old Milly has been living in a walled city for two years. She wants nothing more to leave but then the mysterious Wolf-Lords arrive, and Milly inadvertently attracts their attention.

Before long, she finds herself out in the wild, among a people she knows little about and has every reason to fear. But the Wolf-Lords and the wolves are not what she expected, and she soon finds herself enjoying her new freedom.

What Milly doesn’t know is that tensions are building back in Redcross, and that a secret she and her friends have been keeping is close to being exposed – a secret that involves the Wolf-Lords. Will she survive her time away from the city…and will she want to return?

207 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 1, 2022

About the author

Lucy Winton is a YA fantasy author. She loves to write (and read) stories with adventure, mystery, friendship, discovery...and a little romance as well. She lives in a seaside town in Devon.

She first started writing when she was four; hopefully, she's improved since then. She loves trying out new recipes, daydreaming and buying more books than her bookshelves can hold.

Reviews

[Judy Ferrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can you imagine living in a fort?

These friends do. They are offered a way out, a marvelous way. Wild Rose is an interesting and incredible story. It's not exactly a romance and not exactly an adventure. But it contains the best of both. You'll love it!!

[Nikki Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this 3.5 Stars on my blog.

The premise of this novel is that Milly and her friends are keeping a secret from everyone… A secret that has something to do with the Wolf-Lords. When the same Wolf-Lords that guided the emigration are called into Redcross to help the Premier with something, Milly and her friends must go through risky measures to ensure that their secret stays safe. Not only that, but Milly is offered to the Wolf-Lords in some kind of deal with the Premier, and now she must go live with them for 6 months. The story takes off, narrating Milly’s friends’ exploits in Redcross as well as Milly’s stay with the Wolf-Lords. Are any of the girls safe?

I really liked the overall plot of this story and the unique land that Milly and her friends come from. It helps that I absolutely love wolves, and I may be harboring a not-so-secret desire to become a Wolf-Lord myself! It was intriguing to learn more about the Wolf-Lords’ culture, as well as how outsiders viewed the Wolf-Lords. I liked that we were given some backstory concerning wars that broke out with the Wolf-Lords, which explains why there are both open towns and walled cities–Redcross being of the latter of course. So again, I did really enjoy the overall plot arc, however I was somewhat confused during the more minor plot arcs that occurred throughout. It seemed that the characters would get overly scared or anxious about something that I simply felt they didn’t need to waste any emotion on. It also seemed that many of the events that Winton built our suspense up to were anticlimactic, the girls thwarting danger or figuring out information too easily and quickly. I believe that this book could have been 100 pages longer, and it may have been better! As long as those 100 pages would have added more climactic moments and lead-up to important events.

As for the characters, I believe that Milly was wonderfully portrayed and dynamic. I was able to get inside her head and understand her thought processes and emotions, which really helped to enhance the story. However, all the other characters seemed somewhat superficial, especially her friends. The girls, Avery, Sami, and Frankie, all seemed to melt into one another, to where it was difficult to discern unique traits and beliefs. The girls did practically everything as a unit and all had the same kind of outlook on life and on what they needed to do in Redcross. In fact, I could have done without even having Sami at all, and just having Leo’s sister and Frankie–perhaps blending some of Sami’s traits with Frankie. Though Avery was the least fleshed-out in my mind, it did help propel the plot along that Leo was her twin. I really just didn’t think having 3 extra main characters added anything to the story, and even hindered it in the beginning when it was difficult to keep up with all the names and backstories without any character traits of real substance.

Moving on to the writing style, I enjoyed how flashbacks to the emigration were interwoven within the two main narratives of the girls in Redcross and Milly with the Wolf-Lords. The flashbacks definitely developed the characters a little more and provided a rationale for why the girls were scared of the Wolf-Lords. It also added more history to the land and the Wolf-Lords, which I definitely appreciated. However, the transitions in the writing were extremely choppy, jumping from one narration to the next without warning. It threw me out of the book many times, and was a bit frustrating to be honest. Having some sort of break between Milly’s narrative and the girls’ narrative would have been helpful. I also want to add that the dialogue between the characters tended to be awkward, especially when they tended to over-explain. It seemed as if much of the dialogue was simply there to propel the plot along, not as if the characters were actually speaking to each other normally. However, I do believe that this improved the farther along in the story I got, or I simply became used to it.

One last thing I wanted to note, was that I was also confused on the time period that this book was set in. Originally, it seemed like it was in medieval-ish times, with no technological advances in transportation or the like. However, I was proven wrong as there seemed to be electricity, phones, and handguns. It also threw me off that there was plumbing, but Milly did not have any, and instead used buckets of water to bathe herself, even after reaching civilization. I also have this question: Why did they walk everywhere? Why not take a car (were there cars? I am still confused on this)…or at least horses?

Overall, I did really enjoy the book, even with its occasional flaws. I wholeheartedly believe that it has great potential to become an amazing series, and I am going to get the next book, Dark Rose, whenever it is published! This was a very quick and easy read, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in wolves, mystery, and chasing freedom!

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the author, Lucy Winton, for gifting me with a copy of Wild Rose. All opinions expressed are my own.

1. The characters. Let's begin with the cast of characters. I was very impressed by the author's ability to incorporate so many characters into such a small book (197 pages). There are the characters in the city of Redcross (the main setting) including our main character, Milly, her friends Frankie, Sami, and Avrel, their boss Carlene, the runners Jason and Leo, as well as a few others. When Milly makes her journey with the Wolf-Lords, we're introduced to several of them in detail. All in all, there are at least 15 characters, all fleshed out to differing extents. With all those characters, however, comes the need for equitable amounts of page time to get to know them individually. Unfortunately, because of the length of the book, I felt like I could only slightly grasp the inner personality of Milly and none of the other characters. Good foundations were laid but differentiating the characters from each other proved a daunting task, at least for me. Milly's development throughout the course of the story was really rather nice and her transformation, though mild, is a good amount in terms of a YA novel.

2. The plot. There are a couple of interweaving plot lines throughout the story. Without going into too much detail, essentially Milly leaves Redcross (the main city) with the Wolf-Lords and her friends stay and deal with a choice they made in the past that is affecting their present. These two main plotlines are given pretty equal page time to allow them to develop independently before they meet again at the end of the novel. This is one of my favorite plot structures because of the way the plots diverge and them merge again. All throughout the middle, there's an uncertainty of whether the two will ever connect again and you're wondering how it all fits together, a bit like a mystery novel. At some points, it felt as thought the small conclusions and revelations throughout the novel were anticlimactic and turned out to be smaller than I anticipated they would be. It's not that the revelations were small things, just that they were implicitly presented that way which made me question their significance. It's like if someone tells you for months that there's something amazing that they absolutely have to show you and then the time finally comes and they spend one minute showing you how they learned how to time travel and then never speak of it again.

3. The world. Overall, I really enjoyed the world that the author built in this novel. While I would have liked more page time dedicated to clarifying the specifics, the broad strokes given, supplemented with the character's manner of speaking (etc etc), were enough for me to form a general understanding. In this world, there are open towns and walled cities because of the history of the various territories and the wars between them. Each place that the reader visits with the characters has it's own culture and feel which is especially enriching (the Wolf-Lords live in a cold, rather insular community with old traditions, the people of the Gull Islands treasure the sea and nature, etc). There were a few inconsistencies that I wondered about. For example, at one point, Milly sends a paper message to be 'passed along' but later in the story, phones are used. Certainly these two things can exist in the same society but there was a lack of explanation regarding some of these smaller instances of world-building. As I've mentioned before in this review, this could certainly be remedied by a longer page count.

4. The romance. There are two central romances that make a very brief appearance (both traditionally heterosexual) but they didn't form even a minor plotline which I found particularly refreshing, especially in a YA fantasy.

The Final Verdict:
A refreshing, quick, and easy YA Fantasy with an engrossing plot structure. A low page count lends itself to slightly underdeveloped characters and world-building.
3.5 stars

[Ari Meghlen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was gifted to me by the author.

I liked the idea of these mysterious wolf-lords and the prologue really drew me in. The story mainly followed Milly, a teenager who had travelled to Redcross with her family two years earlier, escorted by the elusive Wolf-Lords.

The book is in the third person and while Milly is the main character, we do shift points of view through some of her friends such as Frankie and Sami.

The prologue was good, dropping you into a situation without much knowledge and drawing you in with curiosity. However, the pacing did seem to slow down a lot after that until much closer to the end when it sped up.

Other than Milly, I didn’t feel that many of the other characters had been fleshed out. There was a limit of character voices, especially Milly’s friends. I didn’t get a good sense of who was speaking as they didn’t have anything distinct to separate them.

The Wolf-Lords were an interesting concept but I did feel they were not given their full potential. I would love to have learnt more about their unique connections to their wolves though this may be expanded upon later in the series.

I feel that the Wolf-Lords who were higher in the hierarchy could have been written with more sense of authority. Their voices and dialogue often didn’t seem to reflect they were something powerful.

I believe that some of the scenes could have been strengthened with more showing and less telling. We didn’t really get to feel what the characters felt because it wasn’t revealed to us with much show. When telling is used too frequently, it detaches the reader and character.

Despite the fact that Milly is taken away to live with the Wolf-Lords and the depth of the secret comes out, I didn’t really get a sense of urgency or threat from these outcomes.

The wolf-lords seemed to deal well with Milly and there didn’t seem to have much cultural difference or difficulty for her to fit in.

If wolf-lords were so different and dangerous, I would have enjoyed reading more about how she stumbled with their culture and how they tried to understand her ways. But this didn’t really come across.

In regards to the description, there was a lot of description on the cafe and the cooking, this is where the majority of the senses where used and since this was a main location for the characters, I can understand why this became the main focus of description.

However, I did feel there was a lack of description of the city itself, the mood of the people and even the characters. I couldn’t really remember what they looked liked as it wasn’t re-enforced gently throughout.

Other than the Complex and correction facility there wasn’t really any mention of other shops or places so it was hard to really immerse myself in the world.

I wasn’t really clear on the time period as there seemed to be a lack of technological advancements, with people hiking to the walled city and living what seemed to be simple lives. However, there was a point where guns were included and it seemed quite jarring.

I did enjoy the history of the humans and why they lived in walled cities, this added a wonderful flavour to the story and a nice backdrop.

Overall, it held my attention and was an easy read. I think there is great potential to make these stories stronger and add a lot more depth to the characters and making it appeal to a larger audience.

However, I am aware this series is a YA so I am not really the target audience, with that in mind I believe those who are the target audience would find it a fun read.

This was given 2.5 stars on my blog