Review: Wonder

Book-cover-Wonder-by-RJ-PalacioThis book was for my other book club. I only knew the blurb from it, but I quickly realized it was YA. YA fiction has a certain feel about it that distinguishes it from novels meant for adults. There’s a rhythm to the words, the phrasing, and some other je ne sais quoi that just makes it different, aside from just the main characters being younger.

Wonder is mostly about the first year that August, a 10 year old boy that suffers from a very rare facial abnormality, attends middle school after being home-schooled his entire life. The book changes perspectives from him a couple of times, letting us see things through his sister Via’s eyes, Justin (Via’s boyfriend), two of August’s new school friends, and a friend of Via’s that has somewhat drifted away in the past several months. The book tries to distinguish between the voices of the characters but since there are so many, it doesn’t succeed all that well. The most unique voice is Justin, since he barely uses punctuation.

The subject matter itself was interesting. Unfortunately, not a lot happens in the book. It isn’t really coming to a climax. It just details the trials over the year and peters out to a somewhat happy conclusion. The primary antagonist, Julian, pretty much disappears about halfway through the novel. He is conveniently whisked away and will not be attending that same school anymore. There is apparently a chapter from Julian’s viewpoint and I will probably read that one because when we discussed it in the book club, apparently that was the best chapter!

I feel like this book is great for YA, but kind of meh for adults. I hope that lots of kids read it and glean something from it.

4 stars

This book fulfills no requirements for the challenge.

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