Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near

On the Same Page is going international with April, friends. There are few things we enjoy more than fairy tales, so when we all saw FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS, a debut from Aussie author Allyse Near, we all pretty much died and decided right away that we needed to read it together.

It’s hard to describe this book, really. Which is awesome. It’s magical realism and its got fairy tales and ghosts (or ARE they???), and family drama, and friendship, and romance. So lots of stuff. And it’s written beautifully. But one of the things that struck me about FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS was the way Allyse Near’s writing was so visual. Everything about Isola Wilde and her beautifully bananas life is so vivid, so once I decided to do a Pinterest board for this month’s post, I was stoked. I spent hours looking for pins and pictures that reminded me of this book, and I could keep on looking. (I probably will.)

So without further ado, I’m going to highlight a few of my favorite pins and then you can go check out my whole board!

This poem by Edgar Allen Poe actually, for all its darkness, the source of a pretty sweet little thing in FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS. Edgar, the boy across the street, calls Isola Annabel Lee after they meet and she learns his name is Edgar. It’s one of those intimate nicknames that comes from people sharing a joke that only they know. They were kind of understated but still kind of intense. 

Christobelle is Isola’s fourth brother-prince. (Yes, she calls all of her brother-princes “brothers” even though only three of the seven are male.) The brother-princes are, with one exception, Isola’s ghost friends (we’ll call them ghosts because I don’t know of another way to think of them that would make sense to people who haven’t read this book yet) that only she can see. They are her protectors and loved ones who are sometimes fantastical creatures–like Christobelle, the murderous mermaid, or Rosekin, the little pink pixie. The story of why Isola calls them brother-princes was pretty enchanting, even if it was a little confusing at first that she called them all “brothers.”

I tried to look for pictures of some of the main characters from FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS, but the only person who I could do any justice at all was James, the second brother-prince, and the only one who is an actual living, breathing human being. He has a very complicated relationship with Isola. He’s kind of a surf bum who maybe, possibly wants to be more than a brother of any kind to Isola. He’s the only person who knows about Isola’s quirks–aka, the fact that she basically has imaginary friends–but he doesn’t deal with it very well. ANYWHO, getting back on track here, this is the best picture I could find of Isola. No, you can’t see her face. But I found that it was her kind of outrageously weird appearance that stuck with me, mostly because she OWNED it. I couldn’t imagine her wearing tame clothing or having just one color hair.

Isola’s bedroom is the scene of so much action, and I just about died when I found this pin because there’s so much about it that reminds me of Isola’s room. First of all, it has a window. Very important. Second of all–and it’s the part that kills me the most–is the writing on the wall behind the bed. Isola describes the wall behind her bed as being so covered over with poems and quotes and words and thoughts that she’s written there over the years that it looks like grafitti. Plus the lights…it makes the room look magical and that’s an important vibe from the book.

RUSLANA. Guys, Ruslana is a Fury and is also the third brother-prince. (I’m not going to highlight them all here, though.) There are so many pins of badass female warriors that reminded me of Ruslana, but this is one of my favorites.

So basically the story of FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS centers around Isola, a young girl who has these imaginary/ghost/friends. She lives on the outskirts of a this magical, kind of weird place called Viven’s Wood. It’s a literal wood. She traverses it daily, until one day she discovers a birdcage hanging from one of the trees with a dead girl’s corpse in it. From that moment on, the woods become less welcoming and more foreboding, and the dead girl begins to haunt Isola and her brother-princes. The culmination of this girl and the cage is pretty great, and sad, but this birdcage reminded me of the one Isola finds the girl’s body in.

Vivien’s Wood. It’s hard to tell if this place is really magical or if it’s just the way Isola sees it, but it’s as much a character in this book as the actual characters.

So there’s actually a really cool story within FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS that involves unicorns and it’s sad and lovely and vengeful and bloody and I just loved the effing crap out of it. Seriously, the fairy tales from Isola’s book are excellent.

All of Isola’s easy, confident weirdness comes from her near obsession with the fairy tales in this book. It was a gift to her from her mother, who is unwell and barely leaves the house. Isola’s relationship with her dad is frosty, and he ignores Isola’s mom outright. But Isola finds comfort in the wild, weird, dark fairy tales of Lileo Pardieu. This stories set the tone for Isola’s life, and for FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS.

But these pins aren’t all, friends!! Go check out the rest of my board! And let me tell you: I’ll be hunting for pins that remind me of this book from here on out.

Follow Amy’s board Fairy Tales For Wilde Girls on Pinterest.

Don’t forget to check out Brittany and Alyssa’s posts for FAIRYTALES FOR WILDE GIRLS by Allyse Near!!