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A review by obsidian_blue
Mysterious Ways by Wendy Wunder
2.0
Please note that I received this via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Trigger warning: Suicide.
I just thought there was too much going on. We have a main character (Maya) but we get chapters showing other characters related to the story and back to her, and them again. And also, the plot such as it is felt very thin to me. The whole book went to a very dark place (thankfully there was a trigger warning) but I just didn't understand what this book was trying to do. It just felt chaotic with no pay off. I stopped and started this one a few times because it did not grab me. I almost DNFed it at one point, but just pushed through.
"Mysterious Ways" follows Maya. Maya is a teen girl who is currently a patient at Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility in Pennsylvania. Maya tells us that she can hear the thoughts of people around her and is also able to think things that can change people and therefore has her thinking she's in essence god. Maya meets Bobby (a fellow patient) and starts to think about leaving Whispering Pines. When she does though she uses her powers to influence her parents, fellow students, and a boy that she likes.
Maya reads....off the whole book. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but she does not read as a 17 year old girl. And you can't add the 'powers' for why she reads off. I don't know. I think that someone this age would have some concerns, but it just read like a mad-lib of reddit comments from people pretending to be teen girls after a while.
The other characters read hollow to me. Tyler. Sigh. I don't even know. Maya treats him like a prop (my opinion) and there's no there there after a while. Lucy. Same issue. She was just there to be Maya's friend and nothing else. Bobby and that whole reveal thing had me going what the world is happening. Maya's parents too felt really thin. And considering the subject matter after a while I wish there had been more something there. At one point they cut off power and heat to her room and I was like....um what is this? I think I kept comparing this to authors who have written YA that I liked in the past like Sarah Dessen and Rainbow Rowell and Wunder kept coming up short.
The writing was a bit hard to get into at first. We start off with Maya who reads the Bible and tells us it's full of lies, but she also starts after a while to have a god-complex and sees herself as one and I don't know if that was the author trying to prove something or not? I think that's my whole problem with this book in a nutshell. I didn't know if some of this was intentional writing to take away something from it or not. It just felt too mish-mash.
The setting takes place in a town in Pennsylvania that felt very non-descript.
I will note that some reviewers had issues with the "feminist agenda" of the author and I did not. I was a little baffled by those comments because what? But also, I never get people thinking that current politics that are shaping the lives of a ton of teenagers right now should not be discussed in a YA fiction book. But I do agree though no teenager is running talking about the patriarchy this and the patriarchy that all of the time. Also Maya calling her parents Boomers and the townspeople Gen X had me going good grief after a while. I don't know how old Wunder is, but it's felt very much she was putting her own older thoughts/feelings into a 17 year old fictional character and it read hollow.
Trigger warning: Suicide.
I just thought there was too much going on. We have a main character (Maya) but we get chapters showing other characters related to the story and back to her, and them again. And also, the plot such as it is felt very thin to me. The whole book went to a very dark place (thankfully there was a trigger warning) but I just didn't understand what this book was trying to do. It just felt chaotic with no pay off. I stopped and started this one a few times because it did not grab me. I almost DNFed it at one point, but just pushed through.
"Mysterious Ways" follows Maya. Maya is a teen girl who is currently a patient at Whispering Pines Psychiatric Facility in Pennsylvania. Maya tells us that she can hear the thoughts of people around her and is also able to think things that can change people and therefore has her thinking she's in essence god. Maya meets Bobby (a fellow patient) and starts to think about leaving Whispering Pines. When she does though she uses her powers to influence her parents, fellow students, and a boy that she likes.
Maya reads....off the whole book. I don't know if it's intentional or not, but she does not read as a 17 year old girl. And you can't add the 'powers' for why she reads off. I don't know. I think that someone this age would have some concerns, but it just read like a mad-lib of reddit comments from people pretending to be teen girls after a while.
The other characters read hollow to me. Tyler. Sigh. I don't even know. Maya treats him like a prop (my opinion) and there's no there there after a while. Lucy. Same issue. She was just there to be Maya's friend and nothing else. Bobby and that whole reveal thing had me going what the world is happening. Maya's parents too felt really thin. And considering the subject matter after a while I wish there had been more something there. At one point they cut off power and heat to her room and I was like....um what is this? I think I kept comparing this to authors who have written YA that I liked in the past like Sarah Dessen and Rainbow Rowell and Wunder kept coming up short.
The writing was a bit hard to get into at first. We start off with Maya who reads the Bible and tells us it's full of lies, but she also starts after a while to have a god-complex and sees herself as one and I don't know if that was the author trying to prove something or not? I think that's my whole problem with this book in a nutshell. I didn't know if some of this was intentional writing to take away something from it or not. It just felt too mish-mash.
The setting takes place in a town in Pennsylvania that felt very non-descript.
I will note that some reviewers had issues with the "feminist agenda" of the author and I did not. I was a little baffled by those comments because what? But also, I never get people thinking that current politics that are shaping the lives of a ton of teenagers right now should not be discussed in a YA fiction book. But I do agree though no teenager is running talking about the patriarchy this and the patriarchy that all of the time. Also Maya calling her parents Boomers and the townspeople Gen X had me going good grief after a while. I don't know how old Wunder is, but it's felt very much she was putting her own older thoughts/feelings into a 17 year old fictional character and it read hollow.