Reviews for Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare

The average rating for Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-11-17 00:00:00 Ryan Ladouceur Although I was originally and definitely very much looking forward to reading Bailey MacDonald's Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare (and of course therefore also thought that Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare would hopefully be a fun and engaging historical English Renaissance theatre mystery), this novel is yet another instance where after trying really really hard to get into Bailey MacDonald's presented text for more than a week, I have finally and with no feelings of contrition whatsoever decided to give up and to consider Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare as abandoned, as yet another middle grade novel which I am definitely neither planning nor wanting to finish. Because yes, and most problematically for ANY potential reading pleasure, I have as both an older adult reader and equally according to my own inner child certainly not found the rather dragging, one dimensional and generally annoyingly longwinded beginning of Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare at all (read even remotely) interesting and engaging and have indeed and certainly also found the character of William Shakespeare as a rather loud-mouthed and constantly asking oh so many strange questions boy really quite massively aggravating and frustrating. For in my humble opinion and according to my own rather picky reading tastes, NOTHING I have managed to read thus far (for the first seventy or so pages) in Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare is really personally relatable, is really all that interesting, and yes, so annoyingly and frustratingly depicted that reading ANYTHING about Bailey MacDonald's Young William Shakespeare or from him in the form of dialogue is just, has been just too tedious and dragging for me to desire reading on, and in particular so since the William Shakespeare character in Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare also shows and features almost no depth of character and feels more like a rather silly textual device than an actual living and breathing person, than a really true and lively character. And while this actually seems to also be the case with ALL of the characters I have thus far encountered in Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare (that ALL of Bailey MacDonald's imagined and depicted personages are a bit stereotypical and flat), this is definitely the most annoyingly obvious with regard to Young William Shakespeare (and yes, to have the quasi main protagonist of Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare appear more like a narrative device and not a "real" enough person, for me, this is definitely a huge issue and as such enough of a let-down and major textual shortcoming for me to stop reading and to consider Wicked Will: A Mystery of Young William Shakespeare as one star and did not finish, or rather as will not be finishing).

Review # 2 was written on 2010-01-22 00:00:00 Thong Pham Wicked Will is a chapter book mystery targeted at the nine to twelve year-old age group, and at times I wondered if this book would really appeal to kids of that age. My son is eight, and while I think he would like the mystery aspect of the story, he doesn't know who Shakespeare is yet, and some of the subject matter towards the end of the book seems inappropriate for his age. Also, the lawyer in the book uses Latin, and I would think that would be a turn off for most kids. The first few chapters are slow to start. I felt that the usage of Shakespearean words such as "ado" and "ye" seemed a little bit forced, and again wondered if kids would see the appeal. The book does pick up pace though when Viola and Will try to track down clues in order to solve the mystery. Will and Viola see a lot of evidence and make a lot of deductions. Is this realistic? Probably not, but then there are a lot of unrealistic mysteries written for this age group. You know, the type where the kids see all of the facts that the adults somehow miss. But really, how likely is it that two kids could solve a mystery that no adults in the town could figure out? You don't learn much about Shakespeare through the story, except for learning about his surroundings and what life might have been like when he was growing up (and this was presented in a very simple way, which makes sense since it is written with kids in mind). *Spoiler alert!* Again, I have to wonder who the target audience is for this book. Some of the content in the book seems less appropriate for the listed age group. For example, two of the characters who are in love commit suicide at the end of the book. Now I get that this was probably a way to show the source material for some of Shakespeare's future plays (like Romeo and Juliet), but are kids really going to understand these subtle references? And even if they did, I just don't think that suicide is a good way to end the romantic storyline in a book for nine to twelve year olds. End of Spoilers* Although the mystery in this book did have some interesting twists and turns, it really wasn't something that I would recommend to my children. Perhaps I don't see the appeal as much because I'm not in the target age group, or maybe I'm too over-protective about the topics my children read about. I'm sure there are probably kids out there who would love this book; I'm just not ready to share this one with my son.