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Read The Wild Child (2000)

The Wild Child (2000)

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Genre
Rating
3.75 of 5 Votes: 2
Your rating
ISBN
0449005844 (ISBN13: 9780449005842)
Language
English
Publisher
ballantine books

The Wild Child (2000) - Plot & Excerpts

This wasn't as good as the 2nd book The China Bride. I was hoping given the interesting premise and heroine I would delve right it into it. The heroine Lady Meriel Grahame hasn't talked for 15 years since the night her parents were killed in a violent ambush in India. She was kidnapped by the rebels who attacked their home and since then never spoke a word to anyone. She's considered 'mad' because of her lack of communication and odd eccentric nature. Dominic Renbourne has promised to take his twin brother's place for a few weeks when he visits his brother's 'bride to be'. The problem I kept having was not really relating to Meriel. She didn't stand out to me like I was hoping. She just was very uninteresting and a little bit dull as a heroine. I was expecting peculiar and eccentric yes, given what she went through that was granted. But her tendency of zoning out, closing off others and not talking because she wasn’t interested in what they had to say and her complete indifferent careless attitude to certain things got really tiresome, a little annoying and just boring. I got excited going into this because the whole premise of the story was centered around her meeting Dominic who slowly pulls her out of her sheltered guarded world after not speaking for 15 years. It’s the main reason I read this. It had a very Nelle-like theme, child abandoned in the jungle and adapts to growing up and living in the real world as a 'civilized adult'. I was looking forward to seeing Meriel become reacquainted with the world and come out of her shell. The plot of the story and Meriel’s situation was really intriguing and had so much potential of being a great story. Putney's effort was admirable but the actual execution was poor and very one-note. There were parts that definitely could have been pushed and delved deeper. There wasn't that intensity, vivid descriptions to site, sound, setting and characters that were present in Kyle's book. Comparing the two, I found this missing overall. I really wish I could say I loved this and enjoyed as much as I did Kyle’s book but I found it lacking overall. The love story in this wasn’t as exciting or believable for me. Dominic is a total sweetheart with so much heart and charm and patience. I really liked him. I struggled to see the chemistry or I should say feel the chemistry between him and Meriel. She was intrigued by him and attracted and very aggressive in her pursuits of seducing him. Which kind of surprised me and came off a little forced and unrealistic. And so disproportion to the time setting and how she was raised. I just found it so unrealistic with her breezy careless attitude towards sex. It was a total suspending belief moment for me to see her be the persuer and initiate sex with Dominic. For someone who was so incredibly isolated from the world since childhood and had no human contact or understanding of intimacy with a male and terrified of all things male and aggressive she was pretty wild and unabashed. In some ways I could see it making sense but in others....I just didn't really buy it. The two conflicting 'personalities' of hers just didn't click for me. The shy quiet child-like innocence v.s aggressive 'pagan' feral wild woman were such a contrast. I usually enjoying seeing conflicting sides to a character but here it wasn't believable given Meriel's circumstances. She was also incredibly indifferent and apathetic to being seduced or taken advantage of and she KNEW what she was doing. Meriel isn’t crazy or ‘mad’ but her hissing like a cat and biting when she was angry did kind of weird me out a little. Plus her total indifferent careless attitude about sex and using opium as incense to ‘seduce’ Dominic was a little cringeworthy and a turn off for me. Yeah not really romantic. :/And the 'surprise' twist at the end was kind of predictable and the fallout was underwhelming in how predictable it was. The villain in this for some reason came off contrived and so cliche. I thought that angle could have been handled better as well. And this is more of a side note but a startling and very confusing mistake which I'm kind of baffled how it was not caught by the editor. Dominic's sister is being courted by a young man who she ends up betrothed to in this story. In the beginning of the book the man who is courting her is named Robert, he's referred to and introduced as Robert, yet half way through the book we have the characters referring to him as Robin. Um...what? And I could be wrong but I remember that her husband in the following book is named Robert. Which is it Putney? Cause the man's name cannot keep changing. Robin and Robert are 2 different names the last time I checked. How no one caught this glaringly obvious error is surprising.And the situation with Dominic and Kyle was heartbreaking and frustrating at the same time. Kyle especially left me a little poleaxed with this complete shift of behavior in this then in his own book. I shouldn't really say 'shift' considering this happens before his book, but the personality change is quite startling. I loved Kyle in his story and in here we see him struggling with dealing with his own personal grief on his own. I wanted to give him a hug and knock some sense into him in this. His stiff overbearing short-tempered selfish personality did not jive well with me and was such a complete contrast and clash to how he was in his own book The China Bride. You would think that was a completely different person. And I wasn't so crazy about his side story that played out in here about his much older Hispanic Courtesan dying lover. :/ I just struggled to fall for their 'love story'. I guess the main issue I had was picturing a 18 year old boy fall for a late 30-something year old experienced Courtesan who he keeps as his mistress for 10 years and referring to her as his everything and love of his life. :/ It made my skin crawl. While Constancea was sweet and kind-hearted I wanted better for him. Glad he finds it in his book.

Not only is this the first of The Bride Trilogy, but this is also my first book by Mary Jo Putney. I've heard countless applauds from this author, so I decided to check her out! The first book I stumbled across was The China Bride, which I really wanted to read until I realized that it was the second book of three, so of course I had to read the first on first. Luckily for me it was on sale, so I snatched it up! I will say it here and now...Mary Jo Putney lived up to her good reviews.This was an interesting tale of love. Meriel (the heroine) was a little anti-social and slightly mad, whilst the hero, Dominic, was a charming younger son, who was a twin. I will admit it...the love story was very out-there and it seemed impossible. However, as time went on the story blossomed into a slightly believable romance. The first quarter of the book bored me too tears, but as the story trudge on it instantly had me hooked! I really wanted to know how everything was going to be resolved and this couple would get their happily ever after. C'mon, its a historical romance! Of course they get their happy ending! *mutters* I wish real life was like that. ANYWAYS, the last 3/4 of the book was a spiral of emotion, action, gasping moments, heartbreak, hope, and finally utter joy. I could barely put the book down.I also must applaud Mary Jo Putney for being able to write a romance where one of the lovers was mute for the majority of the book. She made it work very well...it takes real talent to do such. I also must give her credit for her ability to give a wonderful male POV, at times I felt like it was really written by a man. Sometimes when a woman writes in male POV (or vice versa) it seems forced and sometimes rather cheesy , however MJP did a wonderful job with creating Dominic's and Kyle's voices. Which brings me to the point that I really enjoyed the sub-plot of Kyle and his dying mistress. I hate to say I "enjoyed" it, but I did. I really liked Kyle and his little part of the story. I can't wait to read his story in The China Bride. The author did a wonderful job intertwining the major story and the sub-story. It flowed nicely.Okay...I hinted at this at the beginning, but the romance seemed rather impossible and at times not at all realistic. In reality these two would never had come to fall in love. It seemed like it was to easy for them to be together. This girl, Meriel, had went through some terrible experiences in India and she enfolded herself into her own mind. She hadn't talked to anyone since she was a child and was, well, wild. She did what she wanted, when she wanted. There wasn't much struggle for the two to find love with each other. After a few days, Dominic pretty much had her eating out his hand (and vice versa). It just seemed to happy WAY to FAST and it seemed to easy. It's hard to explain.All-in-all, I liked this book. It may have been a little impossible, but it seemed to work. The characters were wonderfully displayed, the dialogue was good, and I really enjoyed riding along with this story. I am dying to read the next in the series! I will, of course, be reading more of Mary Jo Putney's books. She seems like a wonderful author. I'll be granting this book 3 stars...it's more like 3.4, but since I don't give decimals I had to round. Favorite Character(s): Dominic (a great man, a girl would be lucky to find such a loving and patient man), Kyle (he may express his feelings less than his twin, he seems like a wonderful guy), Jena, and Lucia.Not-so Favorite Character(s): Uncle/General Grahame (he seemed slimy to me...and I was right)Favorite Quote(s): "She wanted to kiss him for his perception, but refrained rather than risk offending his gentlemanly modesty." -Meriel's thoughts on page 180. This had me snorting and laughing like a loon.

What do You think about The Wild Child (2000)?

This is a book that I decided not to finish because, for some reason, it just absolutely was not my thing. I felt angry at everyone, and after over 100 pages the prose didn't engage me enough to slog through my dislike of the characters.Our hero's twin offers a share of the family estates if our hero woos and wins for the twin a wealthy lady who's believed to be mad. (Because a prospective wife, mad or not, is never going to realize the duplicity. Of course not.) The heroine experienced the slaughter of British citizens in India while a child and has not spoken since. Her silence, coupled with her other behaviors and lack of improvement over the years, have her family considering putting her in an asylum. She acted positively feral at times and her thought processes on mating/sex followed a similar path (i.e. she didn't particularly care if our hero consented; he'd consent to it eventually after she broke him down and, well, if he didn't she could just drug him), and I just couldn't like or relate to her. Yes, she experienced horrible trauma, but she also had people all along since then wanting to help her deal with that trauma, and she refused. Instead, she manipulated people and used her so-called madness to get what she wanted without taking any responsibility for herself. For his part, the hero only seemed to care about her because she was beautiful and he could take care of her.
—Cathy

I picked this book up randomly at the bookstore and, before I knew it, I had read the first six chapters and was on my way to skimming the rest of the story. Before the store clerk approached me and demanded me to buy the darn book already, I decided to save him the trouble and went straight to the cashier - with the book in hand, of course! :)Considering the fact that I couldn't stop reading the book at the store, I was more than certain that I would love it. What can I say? It's good to be right! (LOL) As I write this, this gem is sitting neatly on my keepers shelf.I really enjoyed MJP's writing. I'm not a big fan of overly descriptive scenes and, considering how Meriel, the heroine, was basically mute for more than half of the story, I was wondering how MJP would pull this off. Not to mention her relationship with Dominic, the hero. If she didn't speak, how could they communicate? And if they didn't communicate, how could they fall in love with each other in a believable way? Well, MJP made it all work! Her descriptions of Meriel's flower arrangements and her garden were so vivid, I could almost see them. No wonder Dominic was fascinated by her, and the more time he spent with her, the more he got to know her and see behind her facade. From there to falling in love with her, it was only a matter of time.Meriel was not a typical heroine. Although stunningly beautiful - in the eyes of Dominic, anyway -, she started out as a rather selfish person. I understood why she chose to retreat into her own world - aside from the whole murdering of her parents and her being kidnapped at the young age of five, there was one particular event that had me cringing in horror even though she herself didn't seem to pay much importance to it - and I never blamed her for it, but it prevented her from maturing. She was just too comfortable living as she pleased and having every one of her whims fulfilled - after all, she was "mad". In a way, the way she seduced Dominic was the ultimate example of her selfishness because she wasn't thinking about anything else but her own wishes. Was it wrong of her? Was she despicable? No, because there wasn't any malice in her mind. She just didn't understand the so-called "society´s rules of proper behavior". It took Dominic's love to make her finally grow up and take responsability for her own life. But her journey back to a "normal" life wasn't an easy one - as it shouldn't have been - and I had a very fretful moment when she was sent to the asylum. Thankfully, she had Dominic...And what a wonderful hero Dominic was! Decent, sensitive and caring, he started courting Meriel out of deceit, pretending to be his twin brother Kyle. But he wasn't comfortable with it and never intended to hurt any part involved. Unfortunately, that was bound to happen once he fell in love with Meriel and he had to choose between saving her life or betraying his estranged brother. There wasn't any doubt about what he would choose to do, but it wasn't an easy decision and I could really feel how much he regretted having to hurt Kyle. I have to say, MJP's depiction of Dominic and Kyle's relationship was as powerful as Dominic and Meriel's, and I really rooted for the two brothers' reconciliation. As this is a romance novel, Dominic and Meriel's HEA was a given, but I wasn't sure how, and if, Dominic and Kyle would ever make amends.The Wild Child was basically focused on Dominic and Meriel, their growing relationship and her slow but steady "recovery", but there was room for a bunch of interesting secondary characters: the already mentioned Kyle, Meriel's uncles and aunts, her Indian servant Kamal, her childhood friend Jena, Dominic's sister Lucia... All of them were three-dimensional people and had stories of their own but, all the while, didn't detract from the main storyline. They actually added to it, since they were all connected.The "unexpected" villain in the end wasn't much a surprise for me. Suspicious that I am, I saw it coming a mile away, but this wasn't a romantic suspense so there was nothing wrong with that. In fact, it was a nice way to set everything "right". I also loved the epilogue, because I got to see that Meriel would never be a "normal" woman and, especially, that Dominic had learned that being "mad" once in a while had its advantages... ;)This was my first book by MJP but I can safely say it won't be my last!
—Dina

This regency romance is anything but proper, since animal lusts run wild. Drama of being the "other twin" keeps the suspense going, and his transformation from rake to lover is endearing. Throw The Aweful Tragedy of the past in, and its a rich plot. Good characters, lots of tension, Indian motifs, make it a saucy and different Regency read, with original drama, even some male/female stereotype role reversal. While in the beginning, the slow pace is a joy to savor, the last hundred pages make an endless wrap up, as novel loses momentum.
—Natalya

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