book review: wildwood by colin meloy

My goal is to try and read 30 books this year, and I will be reviewing most of them. Spoilers ahead.

The first book I've read this year is Wildwood by Colin Meloy. Here is a synopsis from the Wildwood website:

Prue McKeel's life is ordinary. At least until her brother is abducted by a murder of crows and taken to the Impassable Wilderness, a dense, tangled forest on the edge of Portland. No one's ever gone in—or at least returned to tell of it.

So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend Curtis deep into the Impassable Wilderness. There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval—a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater, as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

I've wanted to read Wildwood for almost a year now, which is why I chose it as the first book to read. I had a few minor issues with this book, but overall I liked it a lot. I like the world Colin created inside of Wildwood and it was really interesting reading about the different people living there. I especially liked the Avian principality and the Bandits. I didn't initially care much for Curtis, so when the two children were split up I didn't really look forward to reading from his perspective. Especially when he was siding with the Queen and helped in their battle against the Bandits. Thankfully that changed and I ended up liking him.

The biggest problem I had with the book was the fact that Curtis stayed behind in the Wood without any explanation to his parents. I couldn't believe he and Prue thought it was okay to just let them think he had gone missing and was most likely dead, even if the book hinted that his sister(s) believed him to still be alive. That part of the ending was really my biggest problem, and hopefully in the next book they go into that a bit more. I actually didn't even realize that there were more books until after I finished this one, so I'm pretty excited about that.

I also want to mention that the illustrations in this book are gorgeous. Carson Ellis did a wonderful job.