Review: Wayward Son | Rainbow Rowell

This review is spoiler free.

“But it was a mistake thinking of that as an end. There is no end. Bad things happen, and then they stop, but they keep on wrecking havoc inside of people.”

Series: Simon Snow
Published: 2019, by Pan Macmillan.
Pages: 368
Format: Hardback
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, LGBT, Romance
Contains: Strong Language, Violence, Blood/Gore, Anger

‘Wayward Son’ is the sequel to the extremely popular novel, Carry On, following the story of Simon Snow and Baz Pitch. Simon followed everything he was told to do, and now it’s over he’s left feeling unfulfilled. According to his best friend, he simply needs a change of scenery to uplift his mood, so they set off to America. Naturally, they run into trouble along the way.

This book has been a worldwide anticipated read of the year, and it’s not difficult to see why. Carry On is infamous within its genre, and a novel that loved was bound to receive a hyped-up sequel. So, I had extremely high expectations, yet unfortunately, it all kind of fell flat to me.

With the return of Simon and Baz, I expected the previously anticipated enemies-to-lovers trope to finally come alive. However, that wasn’t the case. Although, Baz continued to be the most interesting character, Simon fell more into the background for me, meaning their relationship suffered considerably. There was no spark between the couple for the majority of the novel, Simon spending the majority of it being depressed, so there was hardly any memorable interaction between the pair. Plus, Simon just couldn’t make up his mind whether they were together or not, which made for a considerably confusing read overall.
As mentioned before, Baz went higher and higher in my estimations as his character was further flushed out, revealing his snarky-badassery throughout the pages of the book. When Simon was continuing to mope about, it seemed as if Baz was the only character capable of accomplishing anything.

The novel as a whole was slightly underwhelming. Areas that didn’t interest me – namely anything involving Shepard – were drawn out, yet the areas that did hold my interest were nothing more than a couple of paragraphs long. With the climax of the novel leaving with the couple’s most interesting conversation in the entirety of the novel, it’s impossible not to be frustrated with the book as a whole.

Overall, ‘Wayward Son’ was a disappointing read. I expected further relationship dynamics with a splash of magical road trips, but instead I got a lot of confusing action and a severe lack of interest.