Skip to main content

Review: Wild Boy by Rob Lloyd Jones


London, 1841

A boy covered in hair, raised as a monster, condemned to life in a travelling freak show.

A boy with extraordinary powers of observation and detection.

A boy accused of murder; on the run; hungry for the truth.

BEHOLD THE SAVAGE SPECTACLE OF WILD BOY!!

LAdies and Gentlemen, take your seats. The show is about to begin.


My Thoughts
A really enjoyable read for me

Wild boy is the story of a young boy during the victorian period who is hairy all over and as a consequence has had to spend his life as an outcast and ending up living and working as a freak in a traveling show.

For me this book had several things about it.

Firstly the plight of wild boy was a story I feel will stick with me for a long while to come. He is treated badly by peers and strangers purely for being slightly different and therefore lives his life ostriacised from normal people. The toll this has on the way he thinks and feels about himself is at times quite heartbreaking.

Secondly I loved seeing Victorian London through this book. I must admit the history geek in me got mighty excited about it and loved all the details that came alongside wild boy's story.

Thirdly I also loved the twist on a Sherlock Holmes theme that wild boy had going on throughout the book in the way he observed and deduced things going on around him. It made for an interesting storyline and I loved seeing how the mystery unfolded over the course of the book.

Maybe not entirely the book for me as I'm really not a circus book fan hence why this review maybe isn't as positive as others you might read but certainly worth the time spent reading it.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hadn't heard of Wild Boy before, and it sounds really good. Thanks for sharing.
Anya said…
Does sound really interesting, but maybe a little young for me. Nice balanced review though :)