Review: THE WICKER KING by K. Ancrum

The Wicker King by K. Ancrum
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have such complicated feelings about this book. It's just...phenomenal.

You know every now and again a book just totally grabs you and you can't put it down? Reading it becomes addictive and you constantly think about the characters? This is one of those books, for me. I read it in three days, and I can't believe I've finished it now. I almost feel lost without more to read as I was so engrossed and caught up in this book. I truly was living and breathing August and Jack's story. And it's a story of a complicated friendship that turns to love, of illness and insanity, of neglect and desperation, of needing to find the people who 'get' you.

The relationship between August and Jack is INTENSE. And it's so well written. It was so tangible and I felt like I could just reach out and grab it. It's so vivid and real. I almost haven't got the words for describing it. I have never seen a relationship written as well as this. It just felt so...real. I could feel the boys' love for each other, and that ending, where they admit their feelings, was such a cathartic moment. It's the characters realising they're in love, something which the readers (and other characters) realise much earlier on.

The book's about the hallucinations that Jack develops and how with each day he's sucked more into this internal world, and how August reacts to this--the codependency that he has for Jack, and his own deteriorating mental health as a result of going along with Jack's hallucinations. August's deterioration is really well done, and we see him putting himself in more and more dangerous situations--life-endangering situations--because he does whatever Jack requests.

I think one of the reasons this book has resonated so much with me is because I have experienced psychosis, and K. Ancrum captures the nature of hallucinations so perfectly--even though we see it all through August's point of view. My psychosis, like Jack's, had a physical cause. Brain inflammation and a brain cyst in my case, rather than a brain tumour. And Jack's hallucinatory world and his behaviour just made so much sense to me. I could see myself in him, and it brought so much of that back to me.

I almost feel like I haven't even processed just how amazing this book is yet. It's just so haunting. Usually by the time I review books, I've thought a lot about why a book creates the impact it does, and how, but I feel totally overwhelmed by the power of this one, and I wanted to write this review now to reflect these feelings. 

Also, the narrative devices in this book are amazing--it's a multimedia book, and parts of the story are told via hospitalisation reports, detention slips, photos of the main characters, and a note where Jack is asking out August. The note is a reoccurring piece of the story, and we see how Jack's crossed it out at various times, then scribbled over it again, as he's struggling to process his feelings for August. This added a whole new dimension to the story too. 

I highly recommend this book.


View all my reviews