literary gluttony

Julia Fine’s What Should Be Wild is one of those books that feels like wandering into a misty forest—you’re intrigued, a little enchanted, but also slightly disoriented and not totally sure where you’re going.

The story follows Maisie Cothay, a girl born with a deadly gift: anything she touches—living or dead—either dies or comes back to life. It’s a killer hook (pun intended), and Fine uses it to explore big themes like femininity, isolation, inherited trauma, and the power of myth. There’s a lot of ambition packed into these pages, and you can feel it humming beneath the surface.

The world Fine builds is eerie and rich, filled with ancestral curses, ghostly forests, and generations of silenced women. There’s real depth here, and moments that hit hard with emotional and thematic resonance.

But—and it’s a fairly big but—the prose occasionally gets in its own way. Fine clearly has a talent for language, but the writing often veers into dense, overly poetic territory that had me flipping back pages to make sure I didn’t miss something important. Instead of pulling me deeper into the story, the language sometimes felt like a wall I had to climb over. There’s beauty in the sentence-level writing, yes, but it can feel more ornamental than essential.

Still, there’s enough here to make it worth the read if you’re in the mood for something moody and cerebral. It’s not a book to rush through—it asks you to slow down, pay attention, and get comfortable being a little confused. If that sounds like your kind of literary feast, then dig in.

Devour or nibble?
Nibble. This one’s more of a slow-burn than a binge. Worth sampling for the atmosphere and ideas, but the dense prose might not be to everyone’s taste.