Thank you to Penguin Randomhouse for an e-ARC of Wild Ground. Here are my opinions on the novel!

This is a love story about Neef and Danny, a couple of teenagers in England who have had a rough go at life. Chrissy, Neef’s mother, is beautiful and uses her beauty to get her through the hard times. Danny is half-Jamaican and the small community they live in, treat him differently due to his skin colour. The novel spans over years and shows the highs and lows of this couple.

I’m not often a romance reader, but this was quite a beautiful book. It is tragically sad and my heart went out to Neef and Danny often. I wanted to see them overcome and fight past their demons but so often they succumb to various pressures around them. It’s not an easy read, so I would advise being in the right headspace to read this one.

The characters were fully realized, but frustrating at times. They just made decisions very differently than I would, but they also went through very different lives than I did. It’s also a little bit of a slow read, and there isn’t much smut if that’s how you like your romance.

I listened to a most of this on Spotify. The narrator, Natalie Gavin, has a voice that I could just listen to forever. I loved her accent and the emotion that was put into her reading. Would highly recommend reading anything narrated by her!

Thank you @netgalley for the Advanced Reader Copy of Wild Ground by Emily Usher. Jennifer meets Danny when she and her mother moved to a small town near London to live with her mother’s new love interest. They both have rough childhoods, and are drawn to each other. Danny’s father is a little better than Jennifer’s mother by not by much. Both families face racism, Danny has a real talent and interest in gardening and horticulture and Jennifer is a potentially talented writer. But things get worse as they get older and drugs enter the picture. Both make some very bad decisions, and the story is bad. Now they are grown up, and you really hope that they find each other again and are happy. But not so sure that will happen. This is a debut novel, and coming of age story. #netgalley #wildground #emilyusher #debutnovel #bookstagram #lovetoread #readersofinstagram #takeapagefrommybook #bookloversofinstagram

ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a little backlogged on my ARC’s but working diligently to get caught up. I really enjoyed the premise of this story! It highlights the racial divide in England, as it still is in much of the world. First love can last a lifetime, whether you end up with the other person or not. This book was both happy at times and downright depressing at others. I would recommend for anyone that enjoys books about first love and interracial relationships!

*Thank you to NetGalley for the advance copy of "Wild Ground" by Emily Usher.

I loved this novel! The storyline and characters really sucked me in from the get-go. As another reviewer said, "This is a story about the struggles of poverty, addiction, racism in a small town, and the love and comfort two kids find in each other. It's rough and heartbreaking and beautiful." The characters are extremely well developed. The highs and lows they all go through will take you on an emotional rollercoaster all throughout the book. This is an incredible debut novel by Emily Usher, and I can't wait to see what else she comes up with!

Not everyone can get back up when they fall.

For Neef also known as Jennifer, moving from the inner city to a small Yorkshire town could be the new beginning she needs. Her mother Chrissy, prone to addictions as well as bad relationships, has uprooted the two of them to pursue her relationship with the latest man in her life, Barry, the landlord of a pub there. She meets Danny, a sweet boy who loves flowers, is half Jamaican and (apart from his father) is the only person of color in the town. They become the closest of friends, and ultimately more. But neither comes from a strong family background (Jennifer’s father whenever he appears is sketchy at best, while Danny’s mother is dead, he lives with his grandmother who works at Barry’s pub, and his father drifts in and out of his life), and they are fighting poverty, racism and the ever looming specter of substance abuse which is a presence around them. Their love is fierce, and they have such dreams….but will they be strong enough alone or together to fight through to a better life?
If you are looking for a coming-of-age story with plucky main characters you just know will get their happy ending, then this may not be the book you want to choose. If instead you want to find some vivid, well-developed characters with whom to fall in love even if you suspect your heart will be broken along the way, then Wild Ground is a must read. There are moments of happiness and joy mixed in with bleak despair, and it is not easy or comfortable. It is, however, real, and hard to forget. Readers of author like Julia Dahl, Caroline Leavitt or Alina Grabowski will find this book an excellent addition to their bookshelf. My thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for allowing me early access to this touching but at times brutal look at first love, adolescence, and the hard road of growing up.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Selling Pitch:
Shameless but it’s in London and instead of wacky hijinks, it’s just a bummer the whole time.

Pre-reading:
This got sent to me for reading Sam, so ridiculously high hopes.

Thick of it:
This book’s gonna get savaged for no quotation marks, but it literally never bugs me.

Bears. Always bears.

Please please please 🎶

I’m sure he’s gonna go grow drugs and that leads us back to the first chapter’s comment. (Yup.)

Sam, Shameless, Derry Girls, Skins, My Last Innocent Year

I’m so tired of reading about rape. (Not in an I wish there were trigger warnings so I could avoid it, but just in a it’s always used as edgy throwaway backstory instead of the visceral horror Ninth House produced and I’m tired of reading that way.)

Can’t get over how much everyone in this book sucks!

I hate how they’re trying to justify him of like oh, he was a good kid before he met his girlfriend. Like no, everyone in this book sucks, but he sucks the most. Denz is absolutely the villain.

It’s just such a bummer of a book. Like this girl had no hope.

What the fuck. Like I genuinely can’t tell if the author is writing a good character in that Denz is so fucking delusional and evil or if she genuinely thinks he’s a sympathetic character.

Also, this is not a love story. Like they better not wind up together.

Wow, what a shit ending too. Everything just keeps sucking, and they keep going back to the people who hurt them and have proven that they cannot take care of them as parents. And they’re like what if we gave them more chances? Stop it.

Post-reading:
What a bummer.

Listen, y’all know I love an angry sad girl book. They are my bread and butter. But this was just miserable. The characters never stood a chance. It’s a lot of pretty graphic rape. And the ending is pretty offputting. It tries to convince you that things are looking up while it tries to redeem absent and outright abusive parents and reengaging with toxic relationships in the midst of a mental health battle that goes untreated.

It’s not poorly written. It’s got voice. But there’s no urgency to it. It just kind of plods along from one terrible event to the next. It’s boring. It stops you from wanting to pick it up. And you get so numbed to all the trauma that it no longer has any impact or emotional weight. You’re stuck basically writing the characters off as a loss.

It tries to have a conversation about race and that if you assume the worst of someone, they’ll live up to those expectations, but it does it through the lens of arguably the worst character in the entire book. His actions are so unforgivable that the audience is not going to care how he got there by the time that they get to his tragic backstory. And even then, it mostly amounts to and? You made your bed. Now you lie in it, buddy. But he chose to drag down absolutely every other character in this book with him and then play the victim. His conclusion is a bit too ambiguous. It’s unclear if the author was writing from his perspective or if she genuinely believes his actions were justified.

It’s readable, but you won’t be missing anything if you skip it. Reading this is going to bum you out, but you won’t get the satisfaction of crying about it, so why bother?

Who should read this:
Trauma porn fans
Character study fans

Do I want to reread this:
Nope.

Similar books:
* Sam by Allegra Goodman-coming of age, family drama
* Come and Get It by Kiley Reid-college lit fic drama, ensemble cast
* Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe-messy girl lit fic, family drama
* There’s Going to be Trouble by Jen Silverman-social commentary, family drama
* Like Neon Mornings by Shiloh Sloane-bittersweet romance, family drama
* You’re an Animal by Jardine Libaire-lit fic drama, ensemble cast
* Fireworks Every Night by Beth Raymer-coming of age, family drama
* Welcome to Beach Town by Susan Wiggs-coming of age, family drama
* Seven Days in June by Tia Williams-contemporary romance, family drama
* Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley-coming of age, family drama
* Corinne by Rebecca Morrow-coming of age, family drama
* My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin-coming of age, college, family drama
* Beartown by Fredrik Backman-like they’re not the same, but if you want ensemble cast rape culture commentary that will make you WEEP this is your book

Wild Ground by Emily Usher was such a bleak and melancholy type of book but sometimes, that's just what I crave. Give me all the despair and depressing stories! Wild Ground follows Neef and Danny and their tremulous relationship. They both have family issues and seem to follow a downward spiral into addiction. If you're in the mood for a melancholic book, grab Wild Ground!

Jennifer and Danny meet when they are young teenagers and Jennifer has just moved in with her mother's boyfriend. Life isn't easy for each of them, as they face many challenges on their own and as a couple.

This book touches on a lot of difficult topics in a very moving way. Addiction, abuse, racism -- these are not easy topics to write about or read about.

Emily Usher's writing is really lovely, very vivid -- I could picture all the settings so well. I love reading books set in Ireland and really loved all the descriptions

Although I found this slow in parts, I overall really loved it and felt so deeply for all the characters. Definitely pick this one up if you want a character-driven coming of age story that will make your heart ache.

I will definitely check out more by Emily Usher in the future!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

I struggled with this one a bit.
Hard to get in to, wording made it feel slow to me.
Definitely worth reading if you're in to exploring mental health issues.
Overall I'd rate it 3 stars.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC

Wild Ground by Emily Usher is the story of Neef and Danny and how they try to overcome their environment and families of origin. The author does a great job of getting you to feel for these characters and I found myself rooting for them to overcome all the challenges. There is a lot of sadness in the novel but it didn't feel manipulative to me. The only off-putting part of this read is the lack of quotation marks for dialogue and that sometimes made it hard to follow. Still a good read!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of Wild Ground in exchange for an honest review. This book is available now.

I wanted to read an Irish book while visiting Ireland and decided on Wild Ground.

Wild Ground is a coming of age story that deals with addiction, class, poverty, racism and sexism. I loved the two main characters, Neef and Danny, and was rooting for them the whole way. It was really hard to watch them make bad choices throughout the story and I needed to keep reading to know that they would both be ok. I loved their friendship and how complex it was.

I would have liked a little more at the end even though I also found the ending to be perfect.

I will definitely read more by this author. I loved her writing, I felt completely wrapped up in the story and it’s hard to articulate how much I loved it.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

The description for this book was very intriguing. I was incredibly excited to read it. The author's writing is beautiful, but the pace of the story was too slow for me. On top of that, the dialogue lacked quotation marks, which meant I was pulled out of the story every time I had to recognize that I had started or stopped reading dialogue. I realize that may have been due to this being an advance copy, but I've ready plenty of other advance copies of books that did have quotation marks for the dialogue. Between the slow pace and the lack of quotation marks for dialogue, I found myself struggling to read this book. In the end, I stopped reading at about the 30% mark. I did like the author's writing style, and would be open to trying to read another book by her, but I just felt like this one missed the mark for me.

Neef never seems to have it easy, but she never complains. As long as her magnetic mother, Chrissy, is on her team, she knows they'll be alright. Despite everything — trouble from the council when Neef misses school, the way the neighbors talk about how Chrissy is with men, Chrissy's snowballing struggle with addiction — Chrissy and Neef belong to each other. They'll always take care of each other. Even though Neef isn't thrilled about moving from Leeds to Yorkshire to live with Chrissy's dull older boyfriend above the pub he owns, she knows Chrissy is doing it to give them a better life. As soon as they arrive, Neef meets Danny, the grandson of the longtime cook at the pub, and she knows everything is about to change. Unfortunately for Neef, change isn't always easy, and it isn't always for the better.

Usher's debut catapults from Neef's childhood to adulthood and back again, and boy she really goes through it. Yes, she does get to experience her first love, a safer home life, and encouragement to pursue her love of writing, but she also finds herself face to face with increased poverty, sexual abuse, addiction, abandonment, loss, and racism. As her love for Danny slowly and steadily grows, he becomes her only point of stability and her hope for a better life beyond the apartment above the pub. Danny and his perpetually transient father are the only black people in their town, and as Neef has difficulty understanding his struggles, something between them starts to falter, sending Neef careening down paths she never expected.

I had a little trouble with this. It ended up taking me months longer to finish than I usually take with comparable works. The story was nuanced and Usher's prose is very readable, but the pacing seemed far too slow, especially in the front half. Character development felt a little lopsided, often coming far too late to fully appreciate what was going on with everyone's full story. This also made it hard to really pull for anyone until it felt too late to really invest in them. The pacing of the wrap up felt far too quick in comparison, and connecting with the story was difficult when the real heavy hitting heartstrings tugs came so late. I wasn't super satisfied with the wrap up either. It felt like Neef was put through immeasurable pain without enough of a resolution or lesson that provided any balance. That's how life can go, but I'm coming to fiction to escape. I didn't feel like I could.

Two adolescents, both being raised in terribly dysfunctional families, and on the wrong side of the tracks, meet and establish an immediate connection. They might even be soul mates, destined for happily ever after, except that she's white, he's Black, and in their small little ass-backward town, that complicates things quite a bit.
Pretty simple plot line, but the story itself is meatier and more nuanced than it sounds.
Thanks to #netgalley and #randomhouse for this #arc of #wildground in exchange for an honest review.

This book showed a lot of different aspect of england. This girl named NAJ. A. L limped in leads. With your mother name christie. Mother was very part of her because she was never around and she did not know her father. Weren't she was younger?Her mother really did take care of her.But as she got older , her mother got into drugs and alcohol and t M e n. So she met this man who ran a pub.And they moved to this place and this is where she met. D e s I n e. The grandmother was the cook at the pub His mother was white and his father was black. It was hard for him to be in this town because his father would show up and everybody looked at him. Christy worked in The pub and it was attracted to all men. She sent her daughter to a private school but it didn't really work out for her. Her friend went to a public school and he really didn't like it there because of his skin color. Christ.
Ie's mother took off one day with his father and just abandoned her. Things got really wild at this point. She became just like her mother. She tried to make it work with her boyfriend , but it just didn't seem to pan out. When the grandmother died things got really bad. Father is resting his son and she had nowhere to go because she was a Hooked on drugs. You fall the story really interesting because there's so many Twist in terms. To this story. His son was really into plants. In the beginning of this Book , you'll find out why the father wanted to contact her. You will find out through flashbacks how everything gets tied together. Very interesting book and how people are different in london.

Perseverance is the word that best describes our main character, Neef. She’s raised by a poor excuse of a mother, treated like trash by everyone because of her mother, and seen as a sex object due to the actions of her mother.
When Neef moves to a small Yorkshire town with her stepfather, she meets Danny, who is also treated as an outcast due to being Jamaican and his older brother’s bad history.
These two unwanted souls find acceptance with each other and a deep friendship quickly blooms. But as with everything else in their life, it’s out of their control when they’re separated and forced to hate each other. The story continues to follow Neef for years as she struggles to be something or someone. Her fortune turns when she meets Fionnoula and Ali, a spirited couple who run a restaurant. They give Neef a job and a room upstairs to stay in. Things are looking up, and Neef has created a spot for herself. Until the past shows up and rips out Neff’s heart once again.
A love story of friendship, bonds that save and bonds that pull you down, covering years in the life of Neef. At times you love her, at times you’re screaming at her, but you can’t quit turning the page.
Thanks so much to Random House Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I had such a difficult time finishing this book. As a retired social worker, I found it extremely realistic, however, that meant it was incredibly sad. I found myself expecting and wanting a moment of positivity but they were very few. I do appreciate the opportunity to read the book but it was a tough one. Thanks #NetGalley

3.5 stars

This was not an easy read, but I felt the ending made it worth pushing through the hard parts, which was much of the story. If you're looking for an uplifting story, then this is not it. But if you're looking for a story that is raw and real and perhaps holds some hope for the main character at the end, then you should check out this story. The characters are all imperfect, perpetuating generational damage, and despite the fact that I did not like Danny's father from the beginning, I could also understand where he and Danny were coming from. Ultimately, I feel that this was a case of the adults completely failing the children, and there were so many times when I kept thinking that if only so-and-so weren't so immediately judgmental. They all made mistakes and yes, the kids did too. But part of those mistakes was because they had terrible role models. Even the teachers who were supposed to be better role models immediately judged Danny or Neef, which led to bad choices. I do wonder what would have happened if Neef had allowed her English teacher to help her. I do think that her heart was in the right place, even if she had some of the savior complex happening. And Mary could have helped Danny and Neef, but I feel that her instant judgment of what they were like prevented her from truly reaching them.

This was particularly tough because it was such an unhappy book. And yet, I think the author succeeded in us seeing that as flawed as these characters were, even someone like Denz had redeeming features. While the damage that he probably caused Danny and Neef was likely permanent, I also think that some of what he did probably was good for them, even if they never speak to him again. The ending is open-ended in some ways, but ultimately hopeful.

Hands-down my favorite characters were Ali and Fionnoula as well as their community. They brought some light to what was otherwise a very depressing book. I really liked the conversations Ali had with Neef/Jen, especially about making peace with her past. Not forgetting her past, but accepting it and then letting it go. And although she would never have a relationship with Denz, I liked that she was finally able to see things from his and Danny's perspective, about being a black male in a society that automatically judges you on the color of your skin.

In the end, I would be open to reading another book by this author--she's a good writer and she drew me into Neef and Danny's story despite it being a downer. Would I recommend this book? Yes, depending on what kind of read you're looking for. Content warnings include casual drug use (both weed and much harder drugs), alcohol abuse, sexual assault and victim blaming, racism, and mental illness.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Neef lives with only her mother at the beginning of the book. Then, she meets an intriguing boy who doesn't fit the molds that people hold. She and Danny become friends, and are drawn to one another.

As they age, romance begins to bloom. It isn't easy despite their deep love for the other.

Sometimes, the pressures of everything are just too much.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish the book. I appreciate the slow start to build the story, but it is difficult for me to continue reading a story that is still slow nearly halfway through. I would love to try to reread this book at a later time. Hopefully, the outcome will be different.