Book Review: Magic Hour by Kirstin Hannah

 

Sometimes you just gotta pick up a book based on the premise of "it features a character who befriended wolves". 

Spoilers ahead.

Sisters Julia and Ellie Cates, a child psychiastrist and a cop respctively, are surprised when a mysterious little girl shows up in Ellie's small and cozy hometown. The girl, whom they call Alice, fits the description of a feral child, with her being non-speaking and found in the wood. Ellie and Julia do their best to investigate Alice's case, but it soon proves more difficult than they initially thought. 

This is a book I overall enjoyed, but also one I have gripes with. I will compliment it for its engaging premise and some enjoyable characters. I particularly liked the main trio of Ellie, Julia and Alice. They were pretty well-written and I just liked spending time with them. The story also has some interesting twists and I like how the mystery was set up and revealed bit by bit.

Buuuut there's also a few gripes I have. One, I don't like how this book portrays autism. Not all autistic people have trouble with eye contact, and not all autistic people lack empathy. It's a very case-by-case basis (speaking as autistic person myself here) and some of the ways in which Julia seems to almost talk down on autistic traits made me feel a slight ick. Probably not the author's intention, I don't think there was any ill intent here, but I still didn't really vibe with how the author portrayed autism in this story. But I will admit: the autism aspect is only very briefly touched upon, so it didn't break the story for me or anything. 

I also have to say I really, really didn't enjoy the character of Max. He isn't terribly written or anything, but something about the way he was written I just couldn't stand and I hated his romance with Julia and I just didn't care about this character at all. Slapping a sobstory onto this character (which is only very briefly touched on, by the way) did nothing to endear me to him.

 I'm also not too fond of how Wolf was handled in this story. It's only a side aspect, but basically the wolf pup they find alongside Alice is raised captive for a few months until its eventually set free. Thing is, this would absolutely not work in real life and would pretty much be a death sentence for the wolf pup. You can't just release a captive-reared animal in the wild and expect it to survive, especially when it spent its formative months (such as is the case with wolf pup) in captivity. There's no real efforts made to re-wild Wolf, either. He's just kinda released and then never seen in the story again. I can only imagine how poorly things ended for him. 

So yeah, I do have some small gripes here and there, but despite these I still overall enjoyed the story and was pretty invested throughout. 

Rating: 4/5