Wild Houses by Colin Barrett: book review
Overview: Nicky and Doll are high school sweethearts who both come from challenging family situations. Nicky's parents died when she was a young teen, leaving her mostly alone, and Doll's brother became involved with drug dealing and his father left for Canada. The pair get sucked into the small time drug dealing world in Ballina when Doll's brother, Cillian, falls through on a deal with the Ferdia brothers. When Doll is kidnapped and brought to Dev's house by the brothers, Doll and Dev realize they've found more in common in their strange intersection than they expected. This is a kidnapping story, but none of them are very good at it. Overall: 4
Characters: 4 These characters are all lovably lost. Nicky is too devoted to her high school boyfriend and his family because she no longer has a family of her own. Doll is a teenage boy that's too self-absorbed for his own good. Dev is living in the countryside with his late mother's dog. With his mother gone and his father in psychiatric care, Dev is navigating life and his anxiety in near total isolation until the Ferdia bothers tumble into his life. Strangely, in this awkward kidnapping situation where no one really knows what they're doing, these characters learn a lot about themselves and each other. This random event is what they needed to jolt out of their harmful patterns. While I didn't immediately click with the brothers or Dev and was much more interested in Nicky's story, I came to care about them all.
Plot: 4 This book keeps a relatively narrow scope focused around this brief kidnapping and ransom plot after Cillian's drug dealing gone wrong. There are compelling sub-plots about Dev's grief journey and Nicky figuring out what her future will look like after school, but mainly, the book focuses squarely on the strange few days in all of their lives. This focus helps the book read quickly (it's also pretty short) and keeps these different threads pulled tightly together. Who would've thought a book about a kidnapping could be heartwarming?
Writing: 4 The writing is easy to read and propels you through the book pretty effortlessly. Even though the first chapter didn't majorly grab me, I was sufficiently intrigued to continue reading. I liked the simplicity of the style that laid the observations about these complex characters bare. While I did enjoy the sections that followed Nicky most, the writing does a good job of bringing out the most compelling parts of these characters overtime. There's a real warmth here that I enjoyed, and it's interesting to see the change that tentatively comes out of a compressed timeline.
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