Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith
May 28, 2013
Katherine Tegen Books
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In Wild Awake, Hilary T. Smith’s exhilarating and heart-wrenching YA debut novel, seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd has big plans for her summer without parents. She intends to devote herself to her music and win the Battle of the Bands with her bandmate and best friend, Lukas. Perhaps then, in the excitement of victory, he will finally realize she’s the girl of his dreams.
But a phone call from a stranger shatters Kiri’s plans. He says he has her sister Sukey’s stuff—her sister Sukey, who died five years ago. This call throws Kiri into a spiral of chaos that opens old wounds and new mysteries.
Both exhilarating and wrenching, Hilary T. Smith’s debut novel captures the messy glory of being alive, as seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd discovers love, loss, chaos, and murder woven into a summer of music, madness, piercing heartbreak, and intoxicating joy.
First sentence: “It’s the first day of summer, and I know three things: One, I am happy. Two, I am stoned. Three, if Lukas Malcywyck’s T-shirt was any redder I would lean over and bites it like an apple.”
Why didn’t anything happen in you, Wild Awake? I wanted you to be good, but unfortunately, you were not because nothing happened and goddamn, your main character and the prose was cringe-worthy.
Yes, that’s right, my dear friends. Nothing really happen. Yeah, Wild Awake seemed true to everyday life since life doesn’t have an overarching plot, and I would’ve enjoyed it if I hadn’t disliked the main character. It is a mess (albeit, somewhat fitting to the main character’s state of mind). When I was a few chapters into the book, I thought it’ll be about Kiri Bryd, dealing with her grief over the death of her sister, but it is only to an extent? In a way, you can say that her inability to do so leads her in this weird, stream of consciousness story about her entire summer that was full of obsessive piano playing, lusting over her close friend Lukas, traipsing around the dark in a very bad neighborhood on a bike, and hanging out with semi-unsavory folks. Other than that, all the characters fall short of making me actually care for them and the content, which is a shame.
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