Review Detail

Jessica Spotswood’s Born Wicked, for me, ran very closely to A Great and Terrible Beauty, but also reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale. Yet while I think Born Wicked is similar to both of those books, I do think it’s also better.

In the early stages of Born Wicked, I wasn’t completely hooked, as there was a lot of focus given to the Brotherhood, which, in this dystopian nineteenth century, was the equivalent to the medieval Papacy—church and government combined in one. Said Brotherhood also had some lovely ideas about womenkind.

Okay, so in no circumstance do I agree with anything the Brotherhood preaches. Period. If you find me telling someone that a woman’s main duty is to pop out babies and cook dinner for her husband, something is seriously wrong with the world. However, neither do I think that all religion is bad and can just be lumped together in the way Spotswood did here. I find that type of generalization to be naïve and oversimplified.

I had a similar reaction to certain YA dystopian novels that try to claim that science is bad. All science. Like there’s only one kind.

Anyway, anyway. I feel like Born Wicked’s plot dealt with a lot of preliminaries for the rest of the series, introducing the concept of witchery, the dystopian setting, etc. I think that worked. As a reader, I definitely needed a lot of detail to get to know what was going on, how things worked. And the world-building was pretty interesting, too. I loved the bits about the development of witches, then the very Handmaid’s Tale-esque takeover of religious fanatics. Very cool.

I also liked Cate Cahill as a protagonist. She wasn’t superly gifted—of her sisters she’s the least academically or mentally inclined. She wasn’t pretty—and not in the “woe is me, I’m hideous, but wait! this hot guy thinks I’m pretty so I must be gorgeous all of a sudden” way. She was very average, except for the doom-n-gloom prophecy that has something to do with her and her sisters.

And I loved the relationship between Cate and her sisters, Maura and Tess. Like Cate, I’m the oldest of two sisters and I thought the interactions (and arguments) between them were all really realistic and interesting. The complexity was perfect.
Worst thing about Born Wicked was the romance. I didn’t like the romance aspect at all. And for once it wasn’t the love triangle that bothered me.

I liked Cate, and I thought Finn was charming and a perfect match for Cate. But they went from zero to “let’s get married” in less than a week. Yes, Cate is on a time crunch, and yes, I’m sure those two (so many, guys, I need to use two fingers to count them!) kisses they shared were very awesome. But no, I do not buy undying love after seven days. Nope, sorry.
The very worst part of the romance, for me, was after Cate and Finn had already sworn their devotion, and then Cate was all

“I want to know everything about you, Finn!” What the heck. How do you know you love somebody if you know nothing about them? Ugh. I seriously almost hit the roof during that scene.

Too bad, though, because like I said, they were a perfect couple.

This is a longer review, but this book was super good and I want to talk about it some more, since I picked out some really big negative issues. Uh, plot. Like I said, it’s pretty much A Great and Terrible Beauty, only awesomer. The last couple of scenes were really good, the resolution was perfectly depressing, and I really need to read the sequel like now.

Verdict: With it’s completely unique alternate history setting and magicky elements, Born Wicked is an amazingly creative read. The Cahill sisters are dynamic, rounded characters, and the situations they run into are engrossing. Definitely a really good book and I wish I’d read it sooner!