THE WILD ONE | Colleen McKeegan
06.14.2022 | Harper
Rating: 4/5 stars
Amanda Brooks is a born-and-bred New Yorker with an envious life: she’s in a great graduate school program, lives in a cozy Tribeca apartment, and is head-over-heels for her handsome, committed boyfriend. But Amanda’s life isn’t as picture perfect as it seems. For over a decade she’s been hiding a dark secret–a secret that goes back to that summer at Camp Catalpa when a man died in the woods. When her past begins to poison her present, threatening her relationship, Amanda has no one to turn to except the two women who know her most monstrous self. But when trusting anyone, even one another, starts to feel like a wildly risky proposition, just how far will these three go to keep the truth from emerging–and their lives from unraveling?
I absolutely love stories set at summer camps. Throw in a dead body and a mystery and there’s not a chance I’m going to resist picking it up!
THE WILD ONE does a fantastic job of weaving together the two timelines of Amanda’s life, with alternating chapters featuring both past and present. McKeegan slowly reveals bits and pieces from each of these timelines to finally give the reader the entire truth, which turns out to be quite complicated. While I loved the multiple timelines, my favorite was the past and watching the coming-of-age story unravel revealing what brought Amanda to be the person she is in the present. McKeegan managed to cram all of this goodness into a surprisingly short book, with under 300 pages, the story skimps on unnecessary details and sticks to what the reader truly wants to know.
🎧: I opted for the audiobook thinking this story would be perfect for my commute and it checked that box perfectly! The narrator was fantastic and I felt the story truly came to life through her voice.
A huge thank you to Harper for my gifted copy!
What Jess Reads 
One thought on “Book Review: The Wild One”