Quick Disclaimer: Wayward Son is book two in the Simon Snow series by Rainbow Rowell. If you have not yet read book one (Carry On by Rainbow Rowell) you will want to start there and may find spoilers for book one in the review below.
"The story is supposed to be over. Simon Snow did everything he was supposed to do. He beat the villain. He won the war. He even fell in love. Now comes the good part, right? Now comes the happily ever after…So why can’t Simon Snow get off the couch? What he needs, according to his best friend, is a change of scenery. He just needs to see himself in a new light…That’s how Simon and Penny and Baz end up in a vintage convertible, tearing across the American West. They find trouble, of course. (Dragons, vampires, skunk-headed things with shotguns.) And they get lost. They get so lost, they start to wonder whether they ever knew where they were headed in the first place…"
---Summary via Goodreads
Review by: anonymous
5/5 Stars
(This book was amazing, thank you for introducing me to the wonder that is the Simon Snow series, Kelsey!)
We are back for round two, with more angsty vampires and wonderfully sarcastic characters! Plus, this book also features cults (like the first one didn’t, in a way, with the whole world of magic)! Of course, this book has the readers mentally begging Simon and Baz to “just please talk with each other about your feelings in a not obscure way, please,” because it wouldn’t be a Simon Snow book without that. And, this book features more vampires. Did the last book leave you wondering what the heck vampire culture was (and why they couldn’t just not drain people dry)? Well, this book expands on vampires a bit more. There’s also the addition of the road trip overarching the entirety of the book's plot (which the characters went on because they were hopelessly sad. characters always go on road trips when they’re hopelessly sad - it makes them actually talk with one another and be annoyed instead of sad). This book also expands on the obscurity that was America that was briefly mentioned in the first Simon Snow book, and the author truly did a good job of incorporating magic into the cultural amalgamation that is America. To bring something new and not based on Carry On to the table, I would like to bring in a quote from Baz, the king of snark himself: “Iowa looks exactly like Illinois. I’m not sure why they bothered to separate them. Just an endless stretch of motorway and pig farms. (There’s the distinction: Iowa smells like pig [have to censor this because it’s a swear wheeeeee, just know another word for poop goes here] rather than Illinois)”. Which, if those few sentences don’t sum up the beauty of this book, I don’t know what does.