Title: Wild Awake Author: Hilary T. Smith
Published: May 28, 2013
Genre(s): Realistic/Contemporary
Page Count: 375
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Things you earnestly believe will happen while your parents are away:
1. You will remember to water the azaleas.
2. You will take detailed, accurate messages.
3. You will call your older brother, Denny, if even the slightest thing goes wrong.
4. You and your best friend/bandmate Lukas will win Battle of the Bands.
5. Amid the thrill of victory, Lukas will finally realize you are the girl of his dreams.Things that actually happen:
1. A stranger calls who says he knew your sister.
2. He says he has her stuff.
3. What stuff? Her stuff.
4. You tell him your parents won’t be able to—
5. Sukey died five years ago; can’t he—
6. You pick up a pen.
7. You scribble down the address.
8. You get on your bike and go.
9. Things . . . get a little crazy after that.**also, you fall in love, but not with Lukas.
The problem with Wild Awake is not the story. The problem is not Hilary T. Smith’s prose. The problem with this book isn’t the characters. No. The problem with Wild Awake is the reason. The reason for the story, for the prose, for the characters—it’s a problem. I couldn’t get past this problem; it tainted every aspect of the book for me. To think, that if one tiny, tiny change had been made, the ridiculous mess the protagonist find herself in would have been completely avoided. It’s the kind of weak plot construction I don’t tolerate, and it severely affected any potential enjoyment I might have had.
The issue, simply, is Disappearing Parent Syndrome. In this book, Kiri’s mom and dad are the most abysmal, disgraceful excuses for parents I’ve ever come across. They decide to take a 6-week summer cruise, leaving their teenage daughter home alone, completely unsupervised, with instructions that she shouldn’t call them and interrupt their vacation. Excuse me? So Kiri, then, basically just runs around town doing whatever the hell she wants whenever she wants. She does drugs, she goes to the seedy side of town, she gets into a car with a strange man and visits his house. She finds out that her worthless parents lied about how her sister died. And then she has a hypermanic episode, and, since her parents aren’t around because they’re idiots, things escalate in a truly dramatic and disastrous way.
From where I’m sitting, Wild Awake as it exists today could not exist unless Kiri’s parents were completely useless, which they were. So then what? Smith purposefully wrote the worst parents into existence just so her story could be a bit more intense, more dramatic, more edgy? That is, honestly, enraging. Most parents aren’t as awful as the ones in this book. Most parents would be around for their daughter, not leave her for six weeks. Six weeks. That’s a long time. A long time. I’m sorry, but in what world is it a good idea to leave a teenager home alone for that long? That aspect of the book completely defies logic. And I’m sorry, but if your book’s existence hinges on faulty logic, I will not be enjoying it. Nope.
Honestly, after I swallowed the god-awful parents aspect, it was impossible for me to like the rest of the book. Wild Awake is just one slow, claustrophobic slide into Kiri’s unchecked mania, with no one there to help her. She didn’t really have anyone looking out for her, which, again, is just wrong. (I really want to strangle her parents. What idiots.)
I’m also slightly concerned with the way Smith dealt with mental health here. Kira’s love interest (AKA “love-bison”) apparently has dealt with paranoia and paranoid delusions. He constantly insists that he doesn’t need to take his medications, and then at the end, when he and Kira join up in this apparently sublime, earth-shattering concert, it’s as if he’s proven right. Playing music resolves all mental health complications. Possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to demonize doctors or the drugs they prescribe. Science is not evil.
Lots of people say Wild Awake is well-written. Sure. Sure it is. Hilary T. Smith illustrates Kiri’s mind very well, first in its stoned state, then in its manic state. I don’t deny this is a pretty book. But the fact remains that I am very uncomfortable with the way this book handled mental health, and the way it used bad parenting as an easy way to make things happen—a trend I was sure YA was starting to see the last of.
In conclusion: Wild Awake is a lazy book. Yes, lazy. Hilary T. Smith used the easy out of failtastic parents to write the story she wanted to write. I can’t possibly see this book in any other light. Pretty prose does not even begin to make up for the illogic present here. I think mental issues are important, and that we need to write about them. But not like this.
