What Should Be Wild

Starred review from April 23, 2018
Fine’s stellar debut is a mystical combination of curiosity, curses, and compassion. Maisie Cothay possesses the ability to slay and bring back to life with just her touch. As a fetus she kills her mother, Laurie, early in the pregnancy, though Laurie’s body remains functional until Maisie’s birth in 1990. Maisie’s father, Peter, is an anthropologist fascinated by the myths surrounding Laurie’s bloodline, which includes a history of disappearing women. At the center of the mystery is Urizon, an estate next to a magical forest. At 16, Maisie is painfully aware of the secret she must contain, obediently following her father’s rules, such as avoiding touching living beings and staying away from the forest. Her sheltered life is shattered when Peter goes missing, leaving Maisie to embark on a rescue mission into the woods with Matthew, the nephew of a family friend. Within the forest’s dangerous, tangled maze is a group of women trapped in limbo, hoping for passage to the next world, as well as a shadow person waiting for Maisie. Fine creates an entirely new twist on the familiar setup of a young woman facing supernatural obstacles while trying to balance her own blossoming youth. This is an inventive and fascinating modern coming-of-age fairy tale.

July 1, 2018

Maisie Cothay has never known the warmth of a hug, a kiss from a parent, or even a firm handshake. The slightest touch of Maisie's skin will kill the living and resurrect the dead. Her father, an anthropologist, has kept her away from society in order to experiment with and track her abilities. The Cothays live in a secluded family estate surrounded by cursed woods. When Maisie's father goes missing, a clue points to the woods, and when she enters the cursed forest, a mystical world awaits beyond the safety of the estate. This fast-paced, imaginative, and intriguing tale will grip readers. VERDICT Libraries will find this realistic fantasy novel hard to keep on their shelves.-Amanda LeMay, Neptune Township Public Library, NJ

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018
A debut novel spins a fairy tale about the power and terror of female desire.Sixteen-year-old Maisie Cothay leads an isolated existence. She was born with a rare talent: Her touch can kill living things and resurrect the dead. As a result, her mother died while Maisie was in utero, and she grows up at Urizon--her ancestral home, which has "a reputation for tragedy"--with only her academic father and a housekeeper for company. Maisie knows that something is cursed in her history: The portraits of her ancestors that line the halls come with legends and rumors about the "bedeviled family line." Many of these stories involve the nearby forest Maisie grew up fearing, warned by her father to never enter. But when Maisie's father disappears, leaving only a strange old map as a clue to his whereabouts, Maisie is convinced that the forest is the key to finding him. As Maisie ventures into the wider world for the first time, she must learn who can be trusted and, finally, via the mysterious woods, must reckon with the true nature of her own gifts and the cursed women in her lineage. Fine, too, looks to the past: Everything from the setting to the elegantly formal prose seems lifted from a 19th-century fairy tale--so much so that it can break the spell somewhat when characters refer to their sneakers or a recycling bin. The novel, with its mysterious forest and Maisie's creative/destructive powers, works well as an allegory of a certain kind of traditional womanly experience of burgeoning sexuality, knowledge, and growing up; though not all female-identifying readers may see themselves here, the poise and skill with which the story unfolds is an undeniable pleasure.Fine has written an old-fashioned book with contemporary resonances.

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April 1, 2018
Everything Maisie touches dies. She can, however, just as easily restore life, but Peter, her anthropology-professor father, keeps her sequestered in the Blakely mansion, with its portraits of Maisie's dead mother's ancestors, a bedeviled family line, and surrounding spooky forest. Mrs. Blott keeps house, while Peter clinically assesses his daughter's mysterious, cruelly isolating condition. When Maisie turns 16, Mrs. Blott dies, Peter disappears, and Maisie encounters Mrs. Blott's sweet-natured great-nephew Matthew. Instantly smitten by unworldly but determined Maisie, Matthew helps her search for her father, until Rafe, a dashing stranger, disastrously intervenes. As the action pitches into suspense and horror, Fine, a first-time novelist of exceptional imagination, interleaves supernatural scenes in the time-warped forest, where women of the past condemned to exile by war or violent punishments for womanly desires confront a black-eyed girl of malevolent appetites. With convincing intensity and a charming mix of wit, gruesomeness, magic, and romance in the spellbinding mode of Alice Hoffman, Fine offers a provocative fairy tale about womanhood under siege and one young woman's fierce resistance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)