Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of "Wild Ground" by Emily Usher. Usher's writing style in this novel is evocative and lyrical, vividly capturing the rugged beauty of the natural world and the emotional landscapes of her characters. The story intertwines themes of resilience and redemption as protagonist Jess confronts her past amidst the untamed wilderness of Alaska. While the pacing is deliberate, allowing for introspection and character development, the narrative maintains a sense of urgency and suspense. "Wild Ground" is a compelling blend of adventure and introspection, offering a poignant exploration of personal growth and the healing power of nature.

"Wild Ground" by Emily Usher is a poignant exploration of first love amidst the challenges of class, prejudice, and addiction. This bittersweet debut follows Neef and Danny, whose relationship blossoms despite the adversities they face in their small Yorkshire town.

Neef's tumultuous childhood with her mother Chrissy and stepfather Barry sets the stage for her deep connection with Danny, a boy marked as an outcast due to his mixed-race heritage. Their bond offers a haven from their harsh realities, but the forces of racism, poverty, and substance abuse continually test their love.

Usher's narrative, split between past and present, masterfully depicts Neef's journey from her troubled adolescence to her sober adult life in London. The author’s prose captures the intensity of first love and the pain of separation with an authenticity that resonates deeply. The characters are richly developed, making their struggles and joys profoundly felt.

While the novel's unrelenting gloom might be overwhelming for some, it also shines a light on resilience and hope. Usher does not shy away from the harsh truths of life but balances them with moments of tender connection and hope. The ending, open yet fitting, leaves readers contemplating the future of these vivid characters.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An emotional tale of two young people living the roughest edges of life amongst the community of poverty, addiction and abuse who find the life support they needed in each other. As their feelings for each other mature, their lives will surge and ebb as a tide that will eventually leave them with only memories.

While the description of this book sounded right up my alley, unfortunately the writing style just didn't mesh with me. I enjoy coming-of-age books, but it is hard for me to read books that lack quotation marks. Because of this, I ended up DNFing the book at 21%. If you don't mind not having quotation marks around dialogue then I would still recommend this, as what I did read was interesting.

🌶️ HOT TAKE: While extreme codependency borne from too many outside socio-economic forces is likely to transform into a toxic relationship, the promise of a healthy future together after time apart might just be enough to manifest it.

🧶 THE SUMMARY:
Jennifer (formerly Neef) is struggling to adjust to her quiet life working in a small London cafe alongside its charitable owners, a multiracial couple. When a man from her past finds her at the cafe seeking absolution for the part he played in her troubled childhood and asking for help finding his son, her first love, whom she hasn’t seen in 15 years, the past she has spent so long running from is forced to the surface. Through memories, Neef reflects on her life growing up above the local pub of rural Yorkshire town and her consuming relationship with the grandson of the pub’s cook. Confronted with too many systemic and circumstantial obstacles, their relationship had proved too harmful to last.

💁🏻‍♀️ MY THOUGHTS:
🔸 This book was not what I expected from the excerpt, and while I was able to recalibrate my expectations after realizing that the tone was to be different, it did color my experience of this book, which was to put it mildly, difficult to read. Neef and Danny were subject to so much adversity at such a young age and this book lacked the interspersed levity to keep the reader on track and promise closure worth pushing through the book for. As a professed reader of sad books, this was honestly just too sad for me to really enjoy.

🔸 Out of the myriad of challenges facing Neef and Danny, I found the racial politics and tensions of the book to be the most interesting, and I wished that the author had chosen to confront these issues more deeply, even if it was at the expense of including some of the others. Danny’s grandmother’s racism in particular was layered because of her caretaker role and contrasted well against more explicit instigations by more removed characters. That being said, Neef’s persisting color-blindness and naivity detracted from the novel’s ability to seriously confront racial prejudice’s role in Danny’s coming of age.

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc, provided in exchange for an honest review.

This is a heavy, slow, heartbreaking book, but also one that left me feeling a little bit hopeful.

I was intrigued by the synopsis of this book, because who doesn't remember the heady feeling of first love? This book includes the highs and lows of that love, but also incorporates much larger, heavier, deeper, and darker struggles that both of the main characters experience within their relationship and beyond.

The book also explores the bonds between parents and children and how difficult and damaging those relationships can be, especially when they aren't what you expect or realize they should be. The characters in this book did not have easy family lives and the story shows what can happen to two young, directionless, poverty-stricken teenagers without great support systems.

I actually really liked the book. I was moved by it, could feel the pain that these kids endured, and thought it was a very real story. Where I struggled a bit was with the pace. It took me a long time to get through this book, and when I checked the page count after reading it (I read the ebook, so didn't know page numbers), I was surprised it wasn't longer. It felt like it was 500 pages or more to me, based on the pace and the amount of time it took me to progress through the book.

That said, I will also note that the book is filled with English slang and dialect, so I think I had to read it slower to understand what was being said. And in several cases, I had no clue what some of the words meant, even when trying to use the context around them to figure it out. It took me quite a while to adapt to reading the dialect.

What I think I loved most about the book, however, was that some people didn't turn out to be who you thought they were. Most of the book you gain an understanding of certain characters only through the eyes of other characters. But when you later hear directly from those characters themselves, it gives you a whole new perspective and understanding. I thought it was beautifully done and it kept me thinking long after I finished the book.

I personally really enjoyed this one, but do think you need to be prepared for a slow, heavy, character-driven novel. If that's your jam, I suspect you'll enjoy this one as well.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Wild ground by Emily usher is a deep story of a young girl growing up with a single mother in the 1990s in Britain. The story then moves her throughout time as she meets and falls in love with Danny. Their relationship grows and unravels as they age and suddenly, she must learn to life without Danny and forget her existed. However, the past has a way of always returning and neef must face the past and the choices made. The story tackles racism, addiction, poverty, mental illness, and loss. Due to the author evoking the dialect of the region and not using quotes to distinguish which characters are talking when, it can be difficult to follow the story. It is also a sad story of grief and despair, making it a tough read.

Thanks to the publisher for providing the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Random House for allowing me to read and review Wild Ground on NetGalley.

Published: 06/04/24

Stars: 2.5

Not for me. I had a difficult time from the beginning and started the book twice with a couple weeks in between. I didn't connect nor care. I struggled with the English slang? Just as I would get some momentum I came to a screeching halt.

It fell short as a story. If the synopsis appeals to you (it did me) and you can read slang I suggest trying.

This novel explores racism, addiction , poverty and systemic injustices. The writing crackles with urgency, capturing the rawness. It is gritty, and character driven.
Many thanks to Random House and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you random house for the review copy of Wild Ground. this is a complex book to review, it is an important story filled with themes that resonate, and require attention, including themes on addiction and poverty, race and social class, and how these experiences intersect and influence young lives. and a progression towards an ending that is discussion worthy.
I will say this is not a read that is easy or light, the tone is heavy and at times, perhaps due to the tone, the book feels slow but also with topics that are hard to return to (some of this might be that I am coming off the end of a really busy time for me and just want things that aren't too much emotional drain). I recommend this for a book discussion that is open to big topics and as an option that is worth attention during Pride month.

Wild Ground by Emily Usher was an intriguing yet difficult story to read.
I enjoyed these characters and their journey. Very descriptive and well written.
This love story is real, raw and very realistic. Which is why I was so engaged.
Overall, I thought it was a really great read.

Thank You NetGalley and Random House for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance copy. I am a little conflicted on my final feelings about this book. On one hand, I think Usher did an excellent job developing the two main characters and detailing the bleakness of their lives and love story. However, it did drag at certain points and nothing was resolved by the end. I would definitely read more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the eARC.

The themes throughout this book will break your heart. It tackles some truly big and important topics. I always struggle a bit with books set in England no matter how hard I try. But, nonetheless, a poignant read.

Wild Ground was a difficult book for me to get into. A lot of issues are addressed including racism, classism/poverty, addiction, etc. The writing is raw and the story is very bleak at times - but overall this is a thought-provoking debut novel.
Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this novel.

Set in England, this was a dark book with flawed characters. I thought this would be more love story than it was so I wasn't expecting the darkness. It might be the timing of having just finished a similarly depressing book, but this was not the book for me.

3.5

Two kids who have not had the best upbringing meet and form an inseparable bond. Crushed by the weight of trauma from those around them failing them over and over, these two find solace and acceptance in each other. Until the weight becomes too much and they both succumb to the world they have been made part of. This is a story of two people falling and failing each other, the world failing them, and the forces that keep them apart (which isn’t for the worst reason). No characters are wholly good or wholly bad. You get to watch Neef, or Jen, try to rebuild herself after hitting rock bottom.

This was at times sweet and at others hard to read. There were important conversations about racism, class, generational trauma and neglect. This dived deep into substance abuse and trauma that results from that as well. This highlights the unhealthy attachment people can form when they have nobody else. It was not an easy read but did feel impactful. Much heavier than I expected going in. The writing was great, but I did feel a lull in the pacing through the middle.

I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wild Ground by Emily Usher is not a typical read for me. I found it extremely depressing and a little long. At times I wanted to stop reading but I’m glad I stuck it out. What I did like about it was the realness. The author wrote about many real, difficult topics and very relevant topics. We can never read enough about prejudice and discrimination and how it makes people feel. It is also about abuse, hate, abandonment, drugs, absent mothers and fathers and broken lives. The two main characters Jennifer (Neef) and Danny were constantly fighting for their lives, coming clean just to fall apart again. Sometimes people love too fiercely and their love destroys them.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Groupfor an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Emily Usher's Wild Ground is a tormenting saga of generational abuse and trauma. Narrator Jen reflects on her life through a series of dramatic episodes and must reckon with the individual who triggered them when he reenters her life decades later.

I get the sense that Jen's narration is supposed to be unreliable, but each recollection is so exhaustive as to shatter the veneer of it being a memory. In other words, there is a lot of writing and a little showing. Perhaps this is an effect of Jen's desperation to understand what happened to her and to be understood: to make her life as she knows it now make sense.

I think I would have appreciated a more balanced narration of past and present. The present narration was so sparse that it only really interrupted my investment in the past. Perhaps a more seamless interaction between the two temporal scenes would have resulted from more chapters set in the present that better contextualize her reflections.

I"m also left feeling a bit weary with how Jen (and--dare I say--by extension the author) handles racism. Danny and Denz's race is mentioned every other page, and yet racism is never directly identified, seemingly for the sake of fragile (white) Jen, who just "doesn't understand". In her present-day musings, Jen--having been taken under the wing of another interracial couple--suggests she *does* better understand the racially charged climate of her upbringing, but ultimately it is unclear if she has really come to terms with how it has affected her understanding of herself and of the past.

I felt these characters and their struggles so deeply. How their families tried to be supportive in the midst of their own falling apart. The magic and wonder in Danny and Neefs relationship felt so real, so much like first love. The story unwound slowly enough for the reader to see them each trying to grow up, grow beyond the life filled with things that would hold them back, trying to hold onto each other while changing. I loved the dialogue, the prose contained truths that hit home. Beautiful and raw and real. I was more than invested and felt the ending a fitting and right one.

Our neighborhood pub or café makes me think of this book where everyone seems to know each other but they don’t really. Locals go there all the time to find a place in life that is familiar. But to step into another person’s path doesn’t seem to be allowed. Secrets stay hidden.

This is a well-developed story with two teenagers: Jen trying to find her way with her best friend, Danny, who tries to protect her. Not everyone in life is blessed with wonderful parents and Jen and Danny are doing the best they can, living on the edge at times while hanging out at the pub.

Jen is smart and loves to write but has a wild side and that gets her in trouble. Danny is a pleaser and he enjoys sharing his knowledge of trees and plants. They may think they’re on a life plan but sometimes obstacles get in the way.

It could be read in a day or two as the writing is smooth with relatively short chapters and a handful of characters. However, right away, you notice that there are no quotes and timelines.

This family drama may remind you of someone you know. It’s that kind of story that includes those feeling like they don’t belong making it hard to socialize. There’s also a bit of prejudice and addiction that surfaces. This would make an interesting conversation about relationships and hardships in life.

My thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of June 4, 2024.