The Wonder brings so many of my favourite elements together – a mystery, faith, a love story, and Ireland. It basically hit all the right notes for me.
Anna is a young Irish girl, who is gaining fame for being able to live without eating for weeks. Lib, an English nurse and self-proclaimed skeptic, is hired to observe and substantiate the claims that this is an honest-to-goodness miracle.
Tensions develop between Lib and Anna’s family, as well as members of the community, as she tries to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding this girl.
Spoilers… (sorta):
While I personally love fantasy type stories, I like to know it going in. I hate the feeling of getting three quarters of the way through a book that appears to be set in ‘real life’, and having the solution to the mystery be some magical, other-worldly solution that appears out of the blue. It just seems so lazy and unfair somehow. I was worried for a while, that this was going to go down that route. Which made me all the happier when the mystery was resolved logically (albeit tragically). I appreciated that more than I knew I would going into this.
I loved so many things about this book – it was a gripping story while still being an ‘easy’ beach read on vacation. The English-Irish, Protestant-Catholic tension, the historical descriptions of Europe in 1850, the colourful characters, the power of love…. it was just good for me all around.
5 Stars from me. :)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.