Wild Thing by Luke Kendall

This is going to be a hard book for me to review because I've seen it in its previous form. Yes, this is another book by someone from WriteOn.

Backstory/How I came to know about Wild Thing. Since I'm on a writing site, I do try to give feedback. Normally, though, I give feedback for the first chapter, but if the book is really good, I continue. I don't continue reading most books that I read. But, Wild Thing was one of them, even though I never really finished it. I did read a fair bit before the author decided to use some professional editors.

And woah, the difference is amazing.

Ok, about the actual book. Wild Thing is about a girl called Sara. When she's very young, a prophecy has her sent from the community she was living in. A few years later, she's picked up by a scientist named Dr. Harmon, who has plans to shape her into an archetype at the Institute for Paranormal Dysfunction. But, there's something much larger at work, and in this book, it involves one particular patient at the Institute.

This is probably not relevant to 99% of the people out there, but I really want to say, that the changes in this book was amazing. I liked it before, but now, it's a lot more fleshed out, and the characters feel a lot deeper. It's amazing to see the story that was hiding under that first draft I read.

Anyway, you can probably tell that I liked the book. I really liked Sara - she's amazingly innocent, even though she's deadly. I do worry about her though, because of the way Dr. Harmon raised her. Dr. Harmon is basically the person I love to hate. He's devious, and probably the reason why Sara will never be normal. So there's a slight sense of satisfaction whenever I see hints at the story that no matter how clever he thinks he is, he is not the one controlling Sara's story. Far from it.

I do, however, need to point out that because of the above-mentioned Dr. Harmon, there are pages in the book (towards the later half) that you'll want to skip if you're squeamish like me. [SPOILER ALERT] I mean, Sara might find it very natural, but you and I know that what Dr. Harmon is doing to her is just plain wrong (and definitely sexually abusive - he even plays the classic 'you made me do it' argument. Ugh). My stomach's a bit weak, so I tend to skip the 'steamier' scenes involving them. [END SPOILER ALERT] There weren't that many, but if you have a problem with stuff like this, consider this a warning.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. It was interesting for me to see the differences in the two versions that I read, and I definitely think that this version is stronger. I seriously hope that Sara will be able to become more independent from Dr. Harmon, and of course, I want to know the ending for this storyline - I have a feeling that it's not completely over yet.

Disclaimer: I know the author, and as I've repeatedly mentioned, I've read this book even before it was published in its current form. All the praise, though, is genuine.