Review: Gone Wild – Ever Cormick

Gone Wild by Ever McCormick
Published by Barefoot Publishing on 15 August 2013
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Pages: 260
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley

Just before college graduation, Ina--star of her senior class--made a mistake that went viral. Then, when life seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, she walked in on her boyfriend cheating with her roommate. To get away, Ina ventures to a cabin on a remote mountain, intent on some solitary time.

She doesn’t count on Adam -- the man who watches over the cabins -- being so distractingly sexy. Adam came to the mountain to get distance from anything that could cause him pain, and Ina stirs feelings in him he thought he’d left behind.

As Adam and Ina open up about their pasts, the mountain seems like the perfect setting for a second chance at love.

Until they realize they’re not alone

*I received a free ARC of Gone Wild from Barefoot Publishing via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review*

Gone Wild has a lot more to do with living with nature than it has to do with a girl who kind of acts more wild than usual – despite the cover that shows a lot of skin and wet white clothes… The story is not bad, but I didn’t really get completely drawn into it, either. I can’t really put my finger on why, though, because even if Ina and Adam were both good characters they didn’t make me need to continue reading.

Ina goes to a secluded mountain cottage to find herself and figure out what to do with the rest of her life now that college is over and she can’t seem to score a job. Adam is running the cabins, but he’s not all that friendly, he likes to have the mountain to himself and to enjoy the peace and quiet as well as the hard work that comes with living there. Gone Wild almost applies more to Adam than to Ina, especially because he’s the one who is actually living in the wilderness while she only wants to try to sort through her possibilities and see what she can do when she’s not surrounded by people who distract her all the time.

In the beginning of Gone Wild, Ina is afraid of the silence and of the dark in the evening. Her fears become stronger when she hears on the radio that a prisoner has escaped from a prison nearby, and she starts hearing things outside her cabin. She also feels like someone is watching her, but she doesn’t trust her instincts at all. At first, she thinks Adam is the one watching her, and sometimes, he is. A tentative friendship start between them, as both have a lot of trust issues. Ina recently broke up with her long-time boyfriend because she found him cheating on her with her room-mate. Adam has a similar back story without the cheating part.

The writing is mostly good, but there are some strange word choices. Instead of ‘feeling subconscious about it’ I’m pretty sure it should be ‘feeling self-conscious’ instead for instance. There were other instances where the wrong word was used as well, but I didn’t highlight all of them.

The story is pretty slow-moving, and not much happens. Of course, there is some character development, but even that felt pretty slow to me. Also, with only two characters as part of the story for most of Gone Wild, it made it a little difficult for me to keep interested. I am pretty sure lots of other readers will enjoy Gone Wild, though. It has the self-reflection and introspection, but that wasn’t what I thought I would get when I started reading, so I wasn’t really up for it. The scenery descriptions are very good, and when things finally started to pick up speed towards the end, the story became more interesting as well.

[I] saw an empty parking lot to my right with another faded sign: No cars past this point. Park and hike. Assuming that note was for hikers, not cabin-renters, I kept driving.

I stopped breathing. I never believed that clothes made the woman. I always thought an attractive person was good-looking whether they wore a potato sack or an expensive dress, but my reflection proved me wrong.

His face was almost foreign with the beard gone, and I studied him without feeling subconscious about it.

 

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