With the premiere of the movie version of “Wicked” just a day away, this book was the perfect read. While most people are familiar with Gregory Maguire’s wildly popular “Wicked”, did you know there are actually three more books in that series? And in the upcoming “Elphie”, readers get to learn all about Elphaba’s nomadic upbringing.

Elphie has an unconventional childhood to say the least. She travels throughout Oz with her minister father, her inattentive mother (until she passes in childbirth), her armless sister, her naughty little brother, and a nanny who tries to keep them all in line. Fans of the “Wicked” series will appreciate references that come up later in Elphie’s life. And the backstory of the future villainess helps the reader better understand some of her personality quirks and why she becomes the woman she does.

For me, all of Maguire’s books take some getting used to initially as his writing style is unique. The wit and humor imbued throughout is one of the best things about the book. It’s also very interesting to learn more about such a well-known literary character. Any fan of Maguire’s writing and/or the “Wicked” series will want to add this book to their collection.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 30 years after Wicked was written, we get Elphie, a prequel to the story we know so well. Maguire has a very specific writing style, is not everyone's cup of tea; many people who are reading his work for the first time may find themselves frustrated. For older Wicked fans, I think that this book successfully thrusts us back into the land of Oz. I have always been a big Elphaba fan, any content I can read about her feels like a win. Did this drag on in some parts, yes. Is it still an interesting dive into Elphaba and Nessa's past, yes. I'm not sure how many Wicked fans we have at the library, but I will recommend this title to the right audience.

First off, thank you so much NetGalley for sending this arc to me before the Wicked movie! Second off, this is EXACTLY what I thought was missing from the first book in the Wicked Years! I thoroughly enjoyed this prequel and I really took my time reading it because I enjoyed it that much. Solid 4 stars from me for sure!

I wanted to love this but with everything going on in politics right now, I need an escape. With this being so politically heavy (about Oz), it was a miss for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC to review!
Rating (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being excellent)
Quality of writing: 3
Pace: 3
Plot development: 3
Characters: 3
Enjoyability: 3
Ease of Reading: 2

Overall rating: 3 out of 5

Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for this arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I always thought that the Wicked books were insane and so chaotic, but that's why I liked them so much when I was younger. And then of course, I loved the musical. With the movie adaptation of the musical coming out in just a few days and knowing that it draws a bit more from the book, I was excited to read this. I really struggled with reading this. I'm used to difficult writing (my whole field of focus includes British Modernism, like, come on!) and I STRUGGLED. The narrative was also kind of boring to me? It was great to read about Elphaba's life before Shiz but there was a lot about the political landscape in Oz that I just found convoluted and confusing? I wanted a focus on Elphie but no. What's here is some confusing political drama that occasionally visited Elphie.

Oh my goodness, never in my life have I been so excited for a new wicked book. Gregory McGuire’s other series are a big. Miss for me, but this one was so good. I know it was written just for the fans, but it was so cute!

Almost 30 years since the publication of Wicked, we get a prequel following Elphie from childhood to University.

What I hoped would be an insight into Elphaba’s childhood was instead a delve into the politics of Oz during Elphaba’s childhood and adolescence. Unfortunately this was a difficult read due to the slow moving plot and odd writing style. Other fans of Wicked and the series may find this enjoyable, but I did not.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I was very excited for this book because of the new Wicked movie. I’ve devoured this book in a few days and am very glad I got to spend some time with Elphaba as she grew up before the movie comes out. I’m very excited to read Wicked next. I hope that they release a book like this for Galinda as well. It’s very nice seeing where she comes from, how she grew up and why she is the way she is.

Well i guess i will be reread the entire wicked series. I loved this so so much. Icing on the top of the cake

Elphie is meant to be a prequel to Wicked and tells the story of Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West, during her childhood before she heads off to Oz and meets Galinda.

I loved Wicked and the way it truly had me questioning everything I knew about the Wizard of Oz, so I undoubtedly jumped at the opportunity to read Elphie. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed. I spent the entire first part of the book feeling like I was simply rereading the beginning of Wicked & then spent the other parts feeling as if the writing style was disjointed and sometimes hard to tolerate. Where in Wicked Elphaba was relatable & easy to understand, in Elphie she appeared to have less character development which could simply be because she was so much younger. You were granted some insight into the relationships she had and how over time they somewhat helped shaped her but to me it seemed to fall flat in comparison to Wicked. Overall I give it 2.5 stars.

Thank you NetGalley & HarperCollins Publishing for providing me with an ARC for my honest review.

I was excited when I got approved for this galley! I loved Wicked (the book first and then the show many, many years later), and it was so nice to be back in that world again with Elphaba. The way Maguire writes is so charming and it gives me such cozy vibes.

This book fills in some holes in Wicked, showing Elphaba (Elphie as she's called when she's young) at different ages, growing up with her nomad family. The first time she meets and talks to an Animal, Nessa growing up along with her, Shell's birth and her mother's death, Nanny, who is such a cranky old lady that you can't help but love her, and so many side characters that help her grow into the powerful woman we all know.

I can't imagine watching the Broadway show and then jumping into this book, not having read the original series (or at least the first book). The writing would feel overly flourished and sometimes like Maguire is just along for the ride with the reader not actually writing the story. But that's what I've always loved about this series. It feels like an old fairy tale with fantastical villains and things so ugly that they're beautiful.

It was a shorter book than the others in the series and I wished there was more, not that it was needed. It was like catching up with an old friend, you never want to say goodbye at the end of the night. Guess that means I'll have to reread Wicked all over again.

As a Wicked fan- I really wanted to love this. Unfortunately, it fell very, very flat. It was also a hard read. Wicked is a very accessible story and the writing style of this is not the same.

Thank you Net Galley for sending me an arc of Elphie. Read this to my oldest. We loved it Perfect for fans of the series and also fans excited for the upcoming film!

I thought this was a worthy successor to the Wicked series, it answered some things that I was hoping for. I've been a huge Wicked and Gregory Maguire since Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and each book has the lore and heart that the original Oz books had. I enjoyed getting to know Elphie as a child and that each part worked overall. It was written in a way that I was expecting and enjoyed about the rest of the series. I'm excited for more in Oz or anything that Gregory Maguire has waiting.

I have been a fan of the Wicked Years books since the beginning and was so excited to receive a digital ARC of Elphie. I was only able to make it through a few chapters before giving up. The narrative dragged and was not interesting in the slightest. It may have been that I had read the other titles so long ago that the story was lost on me, I found myself having to look up all of the political backstory for context- but it didn't help. I had hoped for a book that was really about Elphaba and not the politics of Oz.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review the book.

This prequel to "Wicked" was a little lackluster for me. The plot seemed to drag on more than was necessary and there wasn't really a clear identifiable problem to solve or overcome during the story. It was fairly dry throughout and I struggled to keep reading it. Honestly, if it wasn't related to Wicked, I probably wouldn't have finished it.

So, this was an interesting book and I admit I don’t know what I expected at the outset. It’s very well-written but also contains a lot of stylistic sentence fragments that I had mixed feelings about and moments where the 4th wall gets broken that don’t appear to serve any purpose but add to a bit of the snark which this book already has by the gallons. By the same token, there are also a whole lot of well-expressed gems peppered about — one-off philosophical ideas and observations delivered really beautifully. And there is certainly very good and thorough character development. For example, I can’t imagine the challenge in writing a character that has no arms but whose entire personality is not dominated by this disability. And it was a little harrowing to watch Elphie grow ever more pessimistic and cruel as time went on. So, I really enjoyed the work put into that.

What I enjoyed less was the endless descriptions of fictional landscapes, and since the family was essentially nomadic during Elphie’s early years, there was a lot of change in their surrounding that was described in a lot of detail. And, there were interactions with people who were not necessarily important, a lot of events that didn’t seem worth it to commit to memory in the larger scheme of the plot, and some backstory that felt extraneous except to give Oz connoisseurs or at least Gregory McGuire fans even more of a glimpse behind the curtain. I did not really identify with any of that.

At the end of the day, I was able to ignore the extraneous stuff and follow what I thought was the main storyline which was Elphie in her early childhood development. But, it took more than half the book for anything to actually happen and half the time I couldn’t really see the point to the story. The majority of the book is a series of events just incrementally showcasing Elfie’s ever-increasing cruelty and capriciousness. It didn’t help that Nanny, Frex, Melina, Lei, Boozy, and every other adult that came and went from her life were all emotionally inaccessible at best and insufferable and unkind at worst which I think may have been meant to serve as a possible explanation for why Elphie went down the path she did. I mean, it makes complete sense that there was no love lost in literally any of the relationships depicted here — there isn’t even any grieving discussed after Elphie’s mother dies. But that’s how a villain becomes a villain I suppose, being surrounded by and exposed to people who just don’t care or are willfully blind to the insipid maliciousness of everyone around them. Or maybe the point was that Elphie clearly struggles with expressing her feelings so perhaps the point was the show that. There are also a lot of one-liners highlighting how Elphie doesn’t understand emotions or how she can’t read people and other comments to suggest that she might be on the autism spectrum to some degree. Or maybe this was the author’s way of trying to write a character with high IQ, low EQ, and zero emotional support. I don't know, but I do think Elphie's overall unlikable personality came across quite clearly.

To be perfectly honest, the first 3/4 of the book was actually pretty boring. But like I said, the quality of the writing is quite good with a lot of really clever and poignant narrator observations, for example, “asleep, all children appear innocent. But Elphie is often awake,” or, “a hobbled swan on the water may be unable to wheel aloft with her sisters. But she is no less beautiful, and she is doubled by her reflection in the way she can never be doubled in the air,” or, “maybe it doesn’t matter how we’re made, in the end; it matters who we are.” And frankly, it was these little off the cuff, nearly parenthetical side comments coming every other page that really kept me in the story because I was tasked with looking for a way to connect all of these observations and comments to some overarching story and unfortunately I had to wait till the 80% mark to get to that point.

But as much as I took a beat at every pithy observation about the very world the author was creating to comment on, I was still unsettled by the layers upon layers of near psychopathic apathy and self centeredness running through every character. Shell, at 5 years old, taking pleasure in his campaign of covert destruction while Frex spends 100% of the book in “deep rumination,” Lei is occupied with keeping the family on her property in exchange for some perceived yet unspoken benefit she believes is owed to and will come to her at some point without wanting to do any of the mother/wife work one second before she gets what she wants, Nanny sticking with these people because she has no other use anywhere else but is not useful in any meaningful way and doesn’t provide the maternal or even parental presence these children so desperately need (it is not an exaggeration to say that this lot had not 1 but 2, possibly 3, mother figures fail them), and that’s before we even get to Nessa. If it wasn’t for the author constantly reminding you of her armlessness and the fact that she is bound to spend her life indebted to a person at literally all times you would never guess it given how entitled a lot of her comments were. The girl was destined for a life of near total dependence but you would never know it with how she masterfully manipulates everyone around while keeping up the appearance of one who couldn’t possibly be capable causing any kind of damage.

Honestly, I could go on and on about this book. So much happened but so little happened. It was not a long read, but it was definitely not a quick one because parts of it dragged and I struggled to read continuously. I think if you were somebody who is already aware of the rest of the books in the series you would enjoy this a whole lot. It is indeed a rich backstory and it tells Elphie’s origin story in a pretty satisfying way. I also think the fact that there’s so much to talk about, with so little action and no obvious point of the story, speaks volumes. Being absolved by Turtle Heart’s tribe seemed to represent some kind of crescendo in the story and it was well done. I think the ending was perhaps a little bit rushed: the transition into Wicked came up quickly and I wasn’t expecting that It was all going to wrap up so soon.

Overall, it was a good experience. Not the most compelling plot, and certainly not the most likable characters. But the writing is very good, the backstory will be a satisfying exploration for Wicked fans, and the characters are very well developed, as flawed as they are.

While Wicked is one of my favorite musicals, I do not think this book is simply for those who are fans of the musical. To me, this story was not really about Elphaba, but was more so about the people around her and her surroundings. There were so many times I wanted Elphie to do more or say more. Her childhood is also far from the dreamy one I had imagined and while reading and I couldn’t find any of the characters likeable - except for Elphie herself of course. It was interesting to read about one of my favorite characters, but I found the storyline to be a bit lacking and at times redundant. The pacing was very slow and depended on time skips to move the plot forward. This story was not a bad one… I just wanted more of the Elphaba we know and love.

Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow for this ARC!

Elphie is a glimpse into what really shaped Elphaba into the Wicked Witch of the West that we all know and love. What really stood out to me is the emphasis on early childhood and how that can really shape us as people. There were specific events that happened, like her sister falling into a pond (water!) and being saved by Animals (the ones who can talk), only to have something truly baaaad happen to them later, that show us why she, later, puts so much stake into finding justice for all Animals. I found myself highlighting moments that really put into words feelings that I have felt while looking back on my own childhood. I think Elphie will really resonate well with those of us who read Wicked years ago and now grew up ourselves some and maybe even have kids of our own. You may even find yourself wondering if wickedness was in fact thrust upon her childhood, too.