First of all, let me just say I was drawn to this book from the first moment I heard the premise - Gatsby, but make it gay. SOLD before I had even picked the book up.

Annie is a sheltered, introverted woman who has only ever known life in her small home town. But when her father dies and requests that she come to Crow Island to sort through his house and belongings, she becomes embroiled in a life of intrigue, magic, and mystery. And the most mysterious part of all is her new neighbour, Emmeline (YES THIS IS GAY).

What unravels is a sumptuously gothic tale of magic, found family, the darkness of the human soul, and above all the lengths we are willing to go to protect those we love.

The tension building throughout this book is just divine! It's a slow build that rises inch by inch as more is revealed about each of the characters and their back story. The characters themselves are fully fleshed out and each one is compelling, including the side characters (Nathan might be my favourite little cinnamon roll).

Told in different POVs, this helps to build the tension in the story, as the reader can see everything unravelling, but the characters themselves are often left in the dark regarding each other - they don't know who to trust and in turn neither do we!

The magic system built in this book is fascinating, and it is so well thought out/described that it instantly draws you in - you always want to know more about the different types of magic. And trust me, the magic can turn DARK AND TWISTED. The setting is vividly described too, making you feel like you are there yourself.

Now, to the sapphic part - Annie and Emmeline's relationship is a torture of a slow build that will often leave you screaming at them. It builds and it builds and it builds and it's almost there before it crashes against the rocks and builds again. But it is worth it. You may get whiplash, but it's worth it.

I loved everything about this book. Setting. Characters. Magic. Tension. The absolute queerness of it all. This is my first 5 start book of the year (and I don't give out 5 stars very often!)

I loved the premise for this book; set in the heady, indulgent 1920's, dark magic, and forbidden love but it just wasn't for me. Very little ever seems to happen and the plot has been sacrificed for the emotive, flowery language.
I never found a way to connect with the characters and found myself zoning out for pages at a time. I do feel that there is something there; the ideas behind the book were clever and original and I can see how some people will really love this book, but it just wasn't for me, I'm afraid.
Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an e arc of this book.

Wow, what a read! It took me a little time to get into this one initially but once I got started I didn't want to put it down. It was complete 'Practical Magic' meets 'Gatsby' vibes.

The story is set on Crow Island and Francesca May created the perfect witchy/gothic setting with this I especially liked the recurrence of the crows and the old rhyme throughout the story it definitely added to that spooky vibe. The world building was done really well and it made the reader feel the setting could have been very real rather than some imaginary land.

The characters were interesting. I really liked the relationship between Emmeline, Nathan and Isobel and you could clearly visualise the close bond the three of them had. Annie was a very relatable character however I didn't really like Bea. This dislike began early on when we first met her, it felt very much like Annie would do anything for her best friend but the same could not be said for what Bea would be willing to do for Annie, she came across as quite a selfish character.

The plot was written well and there were parts when I just couldn't put the book down as I had to know what happened. Although the ending wrapped everything up, I did feel it was slightly faster paced than the rest of the book had been and would have liked to see it slowed a little.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to review a digital arc in response for an honest review of this book.

This is a really well written book, with beautifully descriptive writing. Unfortunately the magical thread just didn’t pull me in this time. I think maybe this is because the story is character driven, the characters are very well written and with a great intensity about them but the magic is quite dark and I think I was seeking some happy magic.

promising concept, lacklustre execution. it seemed that it was trying hard to be the next The Chose and The Beautiful (sapphic, great gatsby vibes, magic) but May does not possess the same writing skills as Nghi Vo. Her writing was overworked, clunky, and came across as something that would be okay if it had been posted on a fanfiction site. I believe however that the more May will write the more she will be able to hone her writing skills so I wish her all the best and I'm sure less nit-picky readers won't find this as disappointing as I did.

Immersive and deeply descriptive, Wild and Wicked Things is a beautifully written historical fantasy.

Wild and Wicked Things focuses on the lives of three women whose fates become inextricably entwined. Annie is a naive young woman who arrives on Crow Island following her father's death. Tasked with clearing his home and organising his estate, Annie soon reconnects with her childhood best friend, Beatrice.

Bea has shed the shackles of her humdrum past and now enjoys a life of luxury with her handsome new husband. However, it isn't long before Annie starts to see cracks in the armour Bea has built around herself.

Both Annie and Bea find themselves drawn back time and again to the mysterious, grandiose house next door to Annie's rented cottage on the island. The house is run by the enigmatic Emmeline, a young woman who throws decadent parties every weekend. Locals say Emmeline practices real magic at her parties. Annie and Bea are about to find out what really happens behind closed doors at Cross House.

The setting of this book is gorgeous, although the world-building wasn't as detailed as I would have liked. The idea of the magical Crow Island is entrancing, but there wasn't a lot of explanation for much of the magic in the book. Some of the characters were also difficult to like - but somehow, that only adds to the charm of the book.

Although it didn't blow me away as much as I'd hoped, Wild and Wicked Things is an intoxicating novel of magic, desire, and opulence. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a sequel!

DNFed. I was charmed by the storyline and cover of this book. However the first few chapters were particularly slow-paced, focusing too heavily on descriptive content for my taste.

I think this may suite more of a literary fiction fan instead of someone who likes reading fast-paced fantasy.

Wild and Wicked Things casts a spell over you as a reader, staying true to the blood-drenched glamour of the period. It sells you the dream, while also revealing the horrifying truth to you.

Honestly I was sold as soon as I heard sapphic, witchy retelling to The Great Gatsby. This book really takes the best elements of the original and weaves them into something entirely new. It is a heady mix of fantasy, historical fiction, mystery and a touch of horror. May really does not hold back at times, showing us the gory mess of human failings and the dark price of success. The magic system here is fascinating but brutally unrelenting. It will take everything from you and still want more. This brings in a whole new ethical debate that is so thought-provoking and genuinely chilling.

For me, this book epitomises the feel of the period. You can practically hear the low hum of jazz, taste the alcohol and smell that slightly feral, dangerous feel of when the party comes to an end. The entire book feels like that liminal space between day and night, with plenty of wonder and horror equally waiting in the wings. May infuses this book with so much style and bewitchingly dark threads, to the extent that it just oozes glamour and something much more terrifying. I loved May’s writing endlessly. It was so succulent, seductive and descriptive. At once, it bewitched and terrified me, creating such a thick atmosphere and compelling characters.

Wild and Wicked Things is a bloody, dark and enticing book that lives up to the hype of its fantastic premise.

I very much wanted to like this book. I've been so excited for all The Great Gatsby retellings - especially the gay ones! But this unfortunately did not live up to my expectations.

It had a lot of great things going for it. The atmosphere was incredible: I could really get the feel of a spooky, small island shrouded in fog and all the mysterious goings-on that make the protagonist fear for her life and sanity. And I adored Annie and Bea as characters - they frustrated me a lot, but I really appreciated their struggles and how they were portrayed in general.

Things I could not get behind:
- Emmeline annoyed the fuuuuck out of me.
- Despite being a very wordy and description-heavy novel, the world-building was still somehow lacking. I've spent nearly 2 months reading this book (picked it up first in January, put it down, and then began reading it again in February) and I still can't explain to you how kazam works or what the blood debt entails.
- The pacing 100% was much too slow, and I say this as a fan of slow books in general. Plus, the pay-off of reveals was not worth how slow the entire thing was. I have read books before where the pacing was off but it didn't bother me because there was a very satisfying payoff related to the characters or the events in the book. (One example that comes to mind The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He, which was honestly way too slow for me but the reveal was WORTH IT.) I didn't feel that way about Wild and Wicked Things, unfortunately.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the e-arc of Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Wild and Wicked Things promises witches, Gatsby-esque glamour, sapphic relationships, historical (1920s) era and of course gothic atmosphere by the bucket load, who am I to say no!
The book focuses on three female protagonists, Annie, an innocent who is swept up into a glamorous and glittering world of magic, wild parties, romance that has a dark side of murder, blood debts and mystery. Annie is entranced by Emmaline, her wild and wicked neighbour who holds huge house parties in the house next door to Annie’s rented cottage and exudes glamour, magic and dark mystery. Meanwhile Annie is trying to rekindle her lost friendship with Bea, who escaped their childhood home to marriage and life on Crow Island, but as Annie soon discovers, Bea’s life isn’t all the glitter and gold that it originally seemed, and there is definitely a darkness beneath the glamour.

May definitely delivers multi-layered, morally grey characters and doesn’t limit the characterisation to just these three, Nathan, Isobel and Arthur are drawn with such finesse, that their layers come to light as you progress.

The world of Crow Island is illustrated in the light of Gatsby-style atmosphere, which for me (UK resident,) didn’t quite fit with the location of an island off the coast of England, there was a lot that just seemed very American, but this was minor, and the world itself was built well, with very illuminating descriptions of the island itself and the atmosphere of faux and real magic entwined.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, but I did have to work at it, at times the pacing was a little slow for me, which the lush and beautiful prose did compensate for, but disappointingly it wasn’t a book that totally captured me.
However, if you are a lover of beautiful, lyrical prose, sapphic relationships, glamour, magic, witches and morally grey characters, then this book will pull you in to a world where in place of alcohol, magic is prohibited and Gatsby like excess and drama abound.

I was excited to read this book, it is described as a Sapphic Gatsby with witches, and that sounded both intriguing and my type of book. However, even that did not prepare me for how good this book was.

The writing is beautiful, and perfectly depicts post-war decadence. Moreover, because the writing is so rich and descriptive it transports the reader to the action and you enjoy the extravagant parties more as a guest than an onlooker.

The characters are well drawn and fully developed. Emmeline is a fabulous character, if only I had an ounce of her confidence and sexual allure. However, the other characters are also a joy and I finished the book sad that I would no longer be part of their lives.

Overall, a fabulous read, and yes, the nods to Gatsby were there and were handled beautifully. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Thank you to the author, Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for an ARC in return for a honest review.

WILD AND WICKED THINGS is a brilliantly written book about dark magic and bargains gone wrong.

I liked that the stakes in this book are not world-shattering. Whatever happens to the three women at the heart of this book will not have an impact on the world as a whole. It certainly will have a profound effect on their lives, though.

I do love world ending stakes, but I also like the deep intimacy of people caught up in deeply personal troubles, because they won't get any help from the world. No one is cheering them on, hoping that the world will get saved. They face death in secret and obscurity, able only to rely on each other.

The three of them - Annie (MC), Emmeline (secondary POV), and Bea - are bound up by friendship and blood magic gone wrong, and gets progressively worse. There were so many unexpected twists to just how bad it was going to get, which prompted a lot of "oh no." Being surprised by a plot (but it also being perfectly in line with the characters so feels right) is the best thing in a book.

Also three women at the heart of a book "allowed" to be messy and complicated and very morally grey?! Absolutely brilliant (and these are women who really did feel morally grey to me, unlike many others who have been called that. They are completely willing to bend their morals to achieve their ends. Annie's suggestion about how to end the curse later on in the book was the perfect example of this.)

This is a 1920s set book, but one of the rare SFF ones (at least of the ones I've found) set in the UK. Crow Island is a fictional island set off shore from Whitby, and I really liked the dichotomy of the wealthy island near a region that was far from it. That contrast is made mostly at the start of the book, to highlight the initial discomfort Annie feels when she arrives.

This was my first read of a Francesca May story and I definitely enjoyed it.

It hasn't been the best witchy story I've read but it was really good in that the witches weren't all portrayed as goody goody's instead being shown as being more human and making human mistakes and trying to fix them.

There was some jumping between the characters pasts and the present showing some reasoning as to why they have ended up in the situation they got themselves into.

I liked the descriptions of the spellworking and how the characters have grown and become more adult with great, easy to follow relationships.

It is dark enough that it is definitely an adult story and I'm glad I got to read it.

4.5 stars
A gloriously witchy, Great Gatsby meets Practical Magic gothic sapphic fantasy, blending the glamour and decadence of the Jazz age with Francesca May’s haunting prose to create a dark and atmospherically immersive tale of secrets, scandals, blood magic and romance that’s utterly unputdownable!

In the aftermath of WW1, a young woman (Annie) is swept into a glittering world of magic, romance, blood debts and murder after moving to the mysterious Crow Island, where magic is whispered about—in order to collect her inheritance and sell her estranged late father’s estate.

But she never expected her enigmatic new neighbour to be a witch. After witnessing a confrontation between her best friend Bea and the infamous Emmeline Delacroix at one of Emmeline’s extravagantly illicit parties, Annie is drawn into a glittering haunted world. A world where magic can buy what money cannot; a world where the consequence of a forbidden blood bargain might be death.

I absolutely loved this, in fact I practically devoured it! The world-building was perfectly enchanting and absolutely obsessed with the gothic- like atmosphere of Crow Island with its wild beauty and wickedly dark magical lore. I really enjoyed all the lush details including all those crows which really upped the creepy, gothic witchy vibe that I loved soo much.

I also enjoyed the choice of era—at the height of decadence and wealth in an alternate 20th C USA, as it’s loosely based in The Great Gatsby there were a few similarities (the light that Emmeline looks out at mirroring Jay Gatsby as does the shirt scene and the yellow car.)

But, the plot is vastly different—and dare I say— superior to F.Scott Fitzgerald’s indictment of Captalism. May instead takes more of a feminist slant, with a magic prohibition in place and a foreboding (all male) council of magic users passing judgement (and occasionally death sentences) upon the island’s female population—especially those who refuse to bow to society’s conventions.

I loved how exquisitely complex and full of depth all the characters were but Annie, Emmeline, Nathan and Isobel were my absolute faves. The level of detail in their motivations and backstories was incredible and really made me empathise with all of them, I even emphasised with Bea (Annie’s bestie) who I initially wrote off as just a selfish social climber. Also, the romance between Annie and Emmeline was literal perfection—their chemistry was definitely swoon worthy and the tension was thoroughly addictive.

I must also warn that there are graphic scenes involving: murder,drug & alcohol use, self harm, anxiety/panic attacks, homophobia,domestic abuse,neglect & sexual assault. So if any of these are TW it’s probably best to steer clear.

Overall, it’s wicked, wild and spellbindingly addictive and fans of decadently lush and magnificently witchy fantasies are going absolutely love this!

Also, thanks to Orbit and Netgalley for the e-arc.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Wild and Wicked Things was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022, and it did not disappoint!

Full of lush prose and forbidden magic, this sapphic story pulled me in and didn't let go until the last page. and I loved every single second of it.

Full of opulence, this is definitely one of my top 2022 reads and probably will not shut up about my gay witches <3

I received an ARC via netgalley of this book.

It was a bit of a slog to get through this. I just found the characters incredibly boring and annoying at times. Someone whose just discovered magic bossing people around etc.

The premise is good and the magic systems sounded interesting but I just didn't enjoy the rest of it. There wasn't enough world building for me to be invested. There were lots of ideas e.g the council, war etc. which weren't really used.

If you like magic and witches give it a go - it just wasn't for me.

I found this book really difficult to get into initially, it felt like I had dropped half way through a series or storyline and it took me a long time to figure out what was going on.
I liked the premise of the book and thought the storyline was interesting and once I got into it really atmospheric and intriguing. I liked the main characters and I was really routing for Annie & Emmeline, although at times it was frustrating that they didn’t just get together!
As I progressed through the novel I enjoyed it more and more and if not for the start could of given it a 4/5.
I can definitely see there being a sequel to this and would be tempted to pick it up. I just hope the beginning is a bit more catchy!

I kept hearing about this book and requested an ARC from NetGalley. I’m really glad the publisher agreed for me to read the book. This is an enthralling mix of magic and witches set in the era after the Second World War. Real magic is against the law, and those practising anything but faux magic could be sentenced to death. But the young and wishful still have enthusiasm to experience that which is inexplicable and may solve their real world problems. The story links family strength and frailty, trust and distrust, love and hate into a wonderfully original story of magic, escapism, and binding responsibility. People will be hurt, magic has a cost. Will they escape with their lives? You will be captivated, I assure you, as you find out.

This was a super atmospheric, beautifully written book. I hadn’t realized before going in that it was a Gatsby retelling, but it was done in a way that felt familiar but still super fresh. I’ve read Gatsby retellings in the past that have felt a little too on the nose.

The idea of a prohibition on magic was really interested and such a fun twist on the typical 1920’s era. I found the magic system really intriguing and the author did a wonderful job of explaining everything well enough to understand, but still leaving an air of mystery around how the magic works. They really got the perfect balance.

The atmosphere of the island setting was incredible. This book does lean towards more lyrical, flowery writing, which I love. Every word felt very intentional in painting a picture and made the world super vivid.

The thing that fell a little flat for me was the characters. Annie and Emmeline just didn’t have as much depth as I like when it comes to characters and I found myself not caring about them as much as I wanted to. As far as side characters, I did really love Nathan—and felt like his back story was really well fleshed out—but Isobel and Bea also felt a little on the surface. I feel like, with standalones, you often have to sacrifice one element to make everything fit into one story and I feel like the characters were left behind a little in favor of the more complex plot and excellent world building.

Overall, I do think Wild and Wicked Things would have worked better as a duology—which I would have loved, because I can’t get enough of Francesca May’s writing—but I did really enjoy the book as a whole. If you’re looking for Gatsby meets Practical Magic meets The Once and Future Witches, a combination I didn’t know I needed until now, then you’ll love this book.

Content warnings: self harm/mutilation, death, abuse (from parents/parental figures/spouses), mentions of suicide, abortion, sexism, allusions to transphobia and homophobia

Thank you to Netgalley for the eARC. All views are my own.

I wanted this book since the moment I heard about it - sapphic witches inspired by The Great Gatsby sounded exactly my sort of thing, even if I have to confess that I don’t much like The Great Gatsby itself. This didn’t prove to be a problem – this book more than lived up to my expectations, and I found myself gripped throughout, particularly in the climax.

Francesca May crafts a deeply atmospheric tale, weaving an element of mystery into her setting, Crow Island: a resort for both the wealthy and witches lying just off the coast of Whitby. The book is a slow burn, taking its time to build up to the action and creating a prickling sense of tension in the reader, though it’s buried beneath a layer of decadence and light. It’s beautifully done, and I found May’s prose captivating from the start.

When the action begins, it is almost break-neck in pace, never really letting up, while still maintaining creeping unease. There were times in the second half of the book where I regretted reading it just before bed, both in terms of the horror and how much I wanted to keep on reading!

The characterisation is excellent, though very few of the characters are entirely likable. All three are incredibly morally grey – and Bea in particular, at the centre of the mess, is a hard character to have sympathy for. Characters do things for selfish reasons, and people get hurt because if it, and while some actions and motivations are completely understandable, other times you just want to shake some sense into them.

May does a particularly good job with the antagonist, Arthur, who seems at the start a straightforward villain, but as the story unfolds, becomes much more complex. He is definitely as multi-layered as the other characters.

Emmeline was also particularly well done. She’s entrancing whilst also retaining an essence of danger. Like Annie, the reader can’t help but want to know more, even though the sensible thing to do would be to run very, very far away. She has her own flaws and tragedies and her backstory is reflected in her actions and motivations. I enjoyed Emmeline immensely.

Overall, an excellent, creepy read, full of sapphic longing and morally grey characters. Will definitely be keeping an eye out for more from Francesca May.