Wild and Wicked Things: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller and Tiktok Sensation

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When she witnesses a confrontation between her best friend Bea and the infamous Emmeline Delacroix at one of Emmeline’s extravagantly illicit parties, Annie is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where magic can buy what money cannot; a world where the consequence of a forbidden blood bargain might be death. This is historical fantasy, since it takes place after World War 1, and most things felt very true to the period except that magic and witches were prevalent enough that magic was recently banned. This is a longer book, and at times it was a little slow. I personally would have cut out a few chunks, but the author was very successful in building the past and how this little island steeped in magic felt (as if it had a life of its own). Even magic had different tastes and smells to it which was all wonderfully described. The book is very atmospheric and done well. The slowness of the book works like a charm (no pun intended), because of May’s writing style. There’s no other word to describe it but lush. It shines like a diamond, every sentence somehow more beautiful than the last. Some descriptions feel truly otherworldly, while others forcefully bring you to the pain & dirt of everyday life. The stylistic choices help create the atmosphere of the scenes themselves.

When Annie arrives there, she immediately sees the eponymous, eerie crows --- mythologized to be the ghosts of real witches --- but settles quietly into a remote cabin while she waits for her meeting with her father’s lawyer. However, during her first night there, she learns that her “remote” cabin is next door to the most extravagant mansion on the island: the home of Emmeline Delacroix, Crow Island’s most mysterious and most public witch. Emmeline and her housemates host glittering, luxurious parties every weekend, and all of the island’s wealthiest citizens are always in attendance…at least in part to pay for Emmeline’s gifts of fortune-telling, wish-granting and secret-keeping. Likewise, Emmeline is a complex woman, tortured by her past and haunted by her future. She’s strong but vulnerable, with a reputation as an Anne Lister-like sort; corrupting young women and ensnaring them into her cult of personality (if, of course, you believe the rumours). Naturally, the truth isn’t quite as clear-cut as that. I learned from Emmeline that blood magic is the most dangerous and potent type of magic, and she technically shouldn’t have been using it, but I didn’t learn about any of the other kinds of magic? I couldn’t really tell what Nathan or Isobel were doing with their magic or how it worked. The romance also was not the best. I was expecting some tension and intrigue and just…attraction? I don’t ship couples very much, but I was waiting to start rooting for Emmeline and Annie, and I never got around to doing that.I was promised something “bloodthirsty and glittering” which wasn’t quite what I received, but it was very close and definitely enjoyable enough to make up for it. The plot didn’t feel as exciting as I hoped it would. I was expecting intrigue from the romance, danger and suspense from the plot, and generally just a lot more intensity? I was promised a “bloodthirsty, glittering world” and most of what I got was Annie being indecisive and Emmeline being stressed.

On Crow Island, people whispered, real magic lurked just below the surface. But Annie Mason never expected her enigmatic new neighbour to be a witch. For a book based on magic/witches, the magic system wasnt explained. Sure we understood that it was nature based and rooted in their emotions, desires and their blood, there was no thorough enough explanation as to why they could do these things, why they would want to and why Emmeline knew practically nothing about powers she'd had her whole life. But, the plot is vastly different—and dare I say— superior to F.Scott Fitzgerald’s indictment of Captalism. May instead takes more of a feminist slant, with a magic prohibition in place and a foreboding (all male) council of magic users passing judgement (and occasionally death sentences) upon the island’s female population—especially those who refuse to bow to society’s conventions. And given that this is an adult novel, you as the reader have to piece together the world and its rules yourself. You’re given some pieces of information here and there, but only in the way that is natural to the characters existing in said world. No conversations about things all parties already know about, no infodumping in the narrative. No holding your hand. All is as it’s supposed to be in a fantasy book. It had a lot of great things going for it. The atmosphere was incredible: I could really get the feel of a spooky, small island shrouded in fog and all the mysterious goings-on that make the protagonist fear for her life and sanity. And I adored Annie and Bea as characters - they frustrated me a lot, but I really appreciated their struggles and how they were portrayed in general.A deep, sensuous exploration of the bonds between three very different, complex women that readers won't soon forget." — Gwenda Bond, New York Times bestselling author