There are more spoilers in this review than I usually include, but I have many thoughts about this book and need to express them.

In A Land So Wide by Erin A. Craig, Greer Mackenzie has grown up in the town of Mistaken, a settlement that is hemmed in by large warding stones, which keep the Bright-Eyed monsters of the forest out. Anyone born within the town or who spends the night must stay forever, but Greer longs for the world outside—especially since she’s started hearing the voice of a Bright-Eyed whispering to her. But she and her love, Ellis, will make the best of their circumstances, and plan to wed soon. However, the night they plan to wed goes awry, and Greer watches Ellis somehow escape beyond the warding stones… with a Bright-Eyed pursuing him, no less. Determined to save him and to discover the truth of both the monsters and the town, Greer seeks a way to also escape Mistaken—though it might end up costing her everything, once on the other side.

I’ve never read a book by this author, who up until now has only written novels for young adults. However, this one, marketed as her first book for adults, honestly still sounds and feels very YA to me. Other than some language, violence, and mild sexual content, this could still be perfectly suitable for teens (and I’ve even read some books intended for older teens that do have those things). Not sure what makes this adult. Maybe the publisher just wanted more money, and adult books cost more? Who knows.

That aside, I quite liked the first half of this book for the most part. Learning about the town of Mistaken’s history, as well as its current residents, was interesting. I can completely understand why Greer wanted more from life, especially considering the bizarre Hunt ceremony that takes place every seven years (but more on that momentarily). The entire place is evocative of Salem in The Crucible, in both the townsfolk’s fear of magic and the restrictive roles everyone must adhere to. That makes for an interesting landscape for Greer to navigate. Lachlan, a man her age, is a creep, but his scenes are interesting, and I liked Greer’s bond with Ellis’s sister too. I would have liked to spend more time with her, and even with Greer’s father.

However, so much of Mistaken also feels so much like a 2010s-era YA dystopia to me (again, we’re back on the “why is this not YA?” topic). The town has the Hunt, a game of what is essentially hide-and-seek, in which eligible young men search for eligible young women in the woods, and whoever they find, they marry. This is so bizarre and nonsensical to me! I think that Craig tried to explain that it originated from a historical disparity between men and women in the town, and this gave everyone (i.e., all the men) a fair shot at finding a bride, but it completely takes away the women’s say in the matter, and honestly sets everyone up for failure, because what if the man is displeased by which women he finds first? What if they have no compatibility and thus are both miserable forever? There seems to be no divorce in Mistaken, and so wouldn’t this method of arranging marriages lead to so much potential for abuse or at least dissatisfaction? And apparently, queer people just don’t exist here, because there’s no mention of non-heterosexual pairings at all, so I guess those people are out of luck and have to stay closeted forever?

Honestly, the more I think about the Hunt, the worse it seems. It’s no wonder that, partway through the story, we learn that women use the Hunt as an opportunity to flee from Mistaken, never to be seen again.

Okay, I am verging into spoiler territory, but I really want to talk about this. Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know too many details about the plot. Okay, you’ve been warned. Anyway, Greer discovers that her father, a powerful man in town, has magical objects that enable people to leave Mistaken and not be drawn back at night by the warding stones’ power (stealing one of these artifacts is how Greer manages to leave). The reason he has them is that every seven years, the creatures of the forest known as the Benevolents apparently demand a human sacrifice in exchange for the stones’ protection. So… is that the true reason the Hunt was established? As a smokescreen to keep the entire town from knowing about the sacrifices, so they’d think that the women just ran away? But the Hunt is such a weird idea, I don’t understand why anyone would agree to it and have never questioned it over the years. Furthermore, wouldn’t it be a way more compelling idea to lean into this dystopian concept and have the town aware of the sacrifices, and nominate someone every seven years? That would heighten the tension and add a sense of urgency to Greer’s desire to leave Mistaken. Maybe instead of Greer’s dad manipulating Ellis in secret to be the one to take the fall, the entire town could choose him, so Greer’s decision to leave could be even more dramatic. Why did we have to do this weird arranged marriage hide-and-seek situation, when we could have done that instead? Why wasn’t I consulted? (It’s not my book, and I don’t even know Erin A. Craig, that’s why.)

Ugh, okay, I’ve given this Hunt thing way too much thought and time. Let’s talk about the characters now.

I have mixed feelings about all the characters. Firstly, I struggled with Greer. With her being in her mid-twenties, she doesn’t fit the usual YA protagonist mold, but so much of her behavior skews younger in my opinion. And why doesn’t she see things coming? So many plot points were set up that I figured out immediately, but Greer doesn’t see them coming, or it takes a while for them to sink in. It made reading from her perspective annoying at times. However, I liked what I saw of her romance with Ellis, though he’s absent from so much of the book that I felt I had little to go on in terms of who he was, besides “sweet man that Greer is in love with.” 

Then there’s Finn, who is going to require his own side tangent shortly, but I need to at least touch on the second half of the story first. Because once Greer leaves Mistaken and meets Finn, it feels like an almost entirely different book. The weirdly dystopian nature of the town no longer matters; instead, it’s more like a survival/supernatural horror novel (though it isn’t all that horrifying). Greer’s biggest issue is now figuring out where Ellis has gone, and how to not be eaten by the vampire-like beings in the forest.

Because, yes, somehow there are blood-drinking shapeshifter creatures in this historical dystopia-esque story. It caught me off guard; I mean, I knew there were some kind of monsters, but the form they took was not really what I was expecting. And unfortunately, the character of Finn is deeply entwined with the story of the Bright-Eyeds, and the fact that I disliked him so much made it hard to care about the Bright-Eyeds at all. So on the topic of Finn, yeah, he was unpleasant to me. He reminds me of the worst parts of Edward Cullen from Twilight (and in my opinion, there aren’t many good parts of Edward, so for Finn to be worse is a bad sign). He’s far older than Greer but in the body of a young man, has been watching her (for years!) from afar without her knowledge, and has nebulous-but-undeniably-romantic feelings for her. No thank you! I may know next to nothing about Ellis, but I’m absolutely on his team rather than Finn’s.

So naturally the sort-of love triangle (again, that just screams YA dystopia from the 2010s) was a trial to get through. Yes, Greer gains new information and insight into her heritage and her own true nature, but why did it follow that she started getting feelings for Finn? She just met him! And she’s known Ellis since they were kids, and been in a relationship with him for several years! Plus, her feelings for Finn are established to be partially (even largely) a result of her having to drink his blood (for survival/plot reasons that I don’t feel like explaining) and so taking in some of his sensibilities. This is kind of horrifying… like, to me, that’s basically being magic-roofied. So I do not like that at all, did not like Finn at all, cared not at all what happened to him for the entire rest of the book.

Finn aside, I think the Bright-Eyed creatures could have been interesting, but something about them fell flat. The main antagonist, called Elowen, was very one-dimensional, and I didn’t feel very invested in the action. Even some of the revelations about Greer’s lineage weren’t enough to engross me, and I didn’t feel much emotional impact during the last act.

Okay, I’m getting sick of talking about this. In the end, A Land So Wide definitely had potential, because the premise is quite intriguing (and the audiobook narrated by Cecily Bednar Schmidt is good).The settings—both the town of Mistaken and the perilous forest—are pretty cool. Some of the folklore elements were compelling, but given way less dedicated page space than the almost-love-triangle. Further, the characters were either lacking in depth, frustrating, or just plain creepy. And certain plot elements I found foolish. The first and second halves of the book feel entirely divorced from each other, and should have been better integrated somehow. I genuinely think this would have done well for teens (not adults) a decade or so ago, and I might have liked it better had I read it back then, but for me right now, this didn’t work.

But if you are interested in reading A Land So Wide and deciding for yourself, it’s available now!

(Lucky for me, the next book I’m reviewing, I actually liked!)