I won a copy from Goodreads First Reads.
"A riveting tale from the author of The Orphanmaster about a wild girl from Nevada who lands in Manhattan’s Gilded Age society
Jean Zimmerman’s new novel tells of the dramatic events that transpire when an alluring, blazingly smart eighteen-year-old girl named Bronwyn, reputedly raised by wolves in the wilds of Nevada, is adopted in 1875 by the Delegates, an outlandishly wealthy Manhattan couple, and taken back East to be civilized and introduced into high society.
Bronwyn hits the highly mannered world of Edith Wharton era Manhattan like a bomb. A series of suitors, both young and old, find her irresistible, but the willful girl’s illicit lovers begin to turn up murdered.
Zimmerman’s tale is narrated by the Delegate’s son, a Harvard anatomy student. The tormented, self-dramatizing Hugo Delegate speaks from a prison cell where he is prepared to take the fall for his beloved Savage Girl. This narrative—a love story and a mystery with a powerful sense of fable—is his confession."
It's a very twisted story, full of blood and murder and mystery and Dr. Frankenstein along with a narrator with multiple personality disorder. There's a lot of things going on, so I recommend you to take a step back and breathe.
I repeat, breathe. Do yoga while you are at it. It will help since this book gets really disgusting. And yes, it does get weird.
How weird? Remember Criminal Minds? Towards the later seasons of the tv show, it gets bloodier and gruesome? Well, the Savage Girl episode should be hanging around the end, probably around the season with Emily Prentiss or after her time. But most people probably don't know what's Criminal Minds. Let me just say this is a book about mystery and tons of cases. All cases include a serial killer. Yes, a serial killer. So there's a lot of dead bodies.
Savage Girl is told from Hugo Delegate, but it is mostly centered on Savage girl whose true name is Bronwyn or something like that. Savage Girl isn't really that bad, but know that she has a very complicated past. If you ever want to say something very nasty to her (mentally or physically), just remember she isn't great with people. Okay, she's good with people, but...well, just remember there's something very interesting about her.
I want to debate (with myself) who is more insane. In fact, Hugo and Bronwyn (I'm more used to her name being Virginia) are so insane that they are perfect for each other. I guess their relationship is more subtle, but it's there. It starts off as hate and then slowly builds up admiration along with flirting and love. Puppy love is what I'll call it. Character in the books would probably call it brotherly/sisterly love. Bronwyn is the adopted sister of Hugo, so don't worry about incest and DNA problems and all that stuff.
Sorry about that 'insane' adjective. They are not really insane. They are more like weird and broken yet also strong. Instead of a multi-layered male character, there's a multi-layered female character with a silent male character. Well, not that silent. He's the one admitting everything, not Bronwyn. She's the quiet one, but the one more mentioned and analysis.
Hugo's confession or four hundred pages confession (yeah, it's kind of long) is really deadly. But it's really good. But I won't go into details. I can give similar things, but not the exact details because that's spoiling the book before (it's February) it is even out.
But let me just simply say: Savage Girl is good. There's a lot of things going on, but it's not too bad. Not like the world news page.
Rating: Four out of Five
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