The Wise and the Wicked Wasn’t for Me [Review]

The Wise and the Wicked by Rebecca Podos

Format/source: ARC/ALA Midwinter
Published: 28 May 2019 
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Length: 357 pages 
Genre: Contemporary fabulism
Target Age: Young adult
#OwnVoices: Unknown
(Russian, Jewish, lesbian, bi, and trans rep)
★★½

Ruby Chernyavsky has been told the stories since she was a child: The women in her family, once possessed of great magical abilities to remake lives and stave off death itself, were forced to flee their Russian home for America in order to escape the fearful men who sought to destroy them. Such has it always been, Ruby’s been told, for powerful women. Today, these stories seem no more real to Ruby than folktales, except for the smallest bit of power left in their blood: when each of them comes of age, she will have a vision of who she will be when she dies—a destiny as inescapable as it is inevitable. Ruby is no exception, and neither is her mother, although she ran from her fate years ago, abandoning Ruby and her sisters. It’s a fool’s errand, because they all know the truth: there is no escaping one’s Time.

Until Ruby’s great-aunt Polina passes away, and, for the first time, a Chernyavsky’s death does not match her vision. Suddenly, things Ruby never thought she’d be allowed to hope for—life, love, time—seem possible. But as she and her cousin Cece begin to dig into the family’s history to find out whether they, too, can change their fates, they learn that nothing comes without a cost. Especially not hope.

Description via Goodreads

Review

On first glance, I might consider The Wise and the Wicked a read alike to a number of other YA novels I loved: The Devouring Gray (small town, families with powers and dark past), The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender (immigrant family, generational story, fabulism), The Weight of Feathers (romance, muddled family feud). But in many ways, this book just didn’t click for me like those ones.

The prose style and characters’ behaviours are far more contemporary than I usually read. The fabulism aspects technically drive the plot but they felt more like a backdrop than the driving force of the story. I felt like there were gaps in the story that made it less compelling than it could have been. Snippets of fairy tales, family history, and a podcast are included throughout but I didn’t find them very interesting. (I don’t think the podcast was necessary, though I’m biased against podcasts to begin with.) I didn’t connect with any of the characters. While I don’t think there was anything particularly bad about this book (if i was trying to be objective, I might say the plot is a bit dry given its execution and the narrative style), this clearly wasn’t the right book for me.

To paraphrase the above in a more helpful way: If you prefer more fairy tale than contemporary, you can probably skip The Wise and the Wicked.

I didn’t know to expect queer rep so that was at least a pleasant surprise. (Can you tell this was my first Podos novel? :P) There are lesbian, bi, and trans characters. In some instances these identities are important to the narrative and in others they are incidental.

Romantic relationships play a larger role than I expected. But, I did find the story became a bit more interesting when Dov started to play a larger role (he’s a nice kid).

The Bottom Line

While this book holds a lot of the appeal factors I look for in YA fiction, Podos doesn’t execute them in the style that I prefer. I imagine this story appealing to others who read and enjoy a broader range of YA novels than I do.