Nori’s Comments (group member since Oct 06, 2020)

Nori’s comments from the YHS Class of 2023 group.

Wanderers by Chuck Wendig

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This world Wendig creates is not so unlike our own today. A pandemic like apocalypse, crazy politicians, hyper religiosity, racism, violence, and many other issues fill this novel.

The story starts with a girl named Shana finding there is something wrong with her sister Nessie. She is in a sleepwalking like state and will not respond to anything. Soon she is joined by other walkers, as they travel on foot across the country, and the group gains more people as they go. But what is causing this and why?

I loved the idea of the book but it was poorly executed. The only parts I really liked were the concepts involved and one of the characters, Pete Corley, an entertaining, old rock star. I found that there were too many characters so you didn't get to know most of them well and Wendig tries to weave it all together, but many of the parts just seemed unnecessary. Additionally, the ending was not satisfying and seemed almost unrelated to the rest of the story. My main complaint and question, however, was did he not have an editor?! At 800 pages, this book easily could have been cut down to half of that. It is supposed to be a thriller, but I don't see how it could be as most of the book was very tedious - the opposite of exciting.

While I personally did not love this book, there are many others who might. I would just caution it is unnecessarily long and Chuck Wendig makes it very clear what his political views are through this story. I would recommend this book to someone who likes mysteries and would be interested in reading about a fictional world that has many similarities to our own, but in my opinion, the book was just okay.




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Educated by Tara Westover

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Educated by Tara Westover is a memoir about the author’s life, growing up in a survivalist, anti-government family. She and her siblings were not to attend school, mainly spending their days doing dangerous work in their father’s junkyard or Tara helping her mother, a healer and midwife, and all of them preparing for the “End of Days.”

I really enjoyed this book because of the complex characters and the themes they helped reveal. Tara faces many challenges that often come down to having to decide whether to pursue knowledge and make her own choices or to obey and satisfy her family. This leads to an important concept of conflicts in identities, where on one hand she wants to learn and become independent and on the other, she thinks she must be loyal to her family and a good Mormon daughter. Conflicts also intensify with abusive but also loving family members (her father and one of her brothers seem to be bipolar). Tara must learn to protect herself (both physically and mentally) and start to trust herself and her decisions. Another element that made this book great was the incredible and intense imagery Westover adds to her writing. It gave clear pictures into the story and took the writing to another level.

Some things that I thought could be done differently in this book were to make the timeline of events throughout the story more clear and to remove unnecessary repetition. Additionally, it seemed like some things did not completely add up and some of the information sounded exaggerated or not totally accurate (she does try to point out places where there were conflicting memories and uncertainty of what actually happened). Of course, however, she is looking back to write this and no one's memory is one hundred percent accurate. With some of these minor changes, I believe the book would become even better.

I think Educated would appeal to most people who read memoirs, especially those who liked The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls or other books similar to that. If you are looking for a powerful story about someone with a very crazy, traumatic childhood, finding their own path in life, this book is for you!



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