Book Review: Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke

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Wink Poppy Midnight
Author: April Genevieve Tucholke
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Mystery
Released: March 22 2016
Review Source: Dial Books

Every story needs a hero. Every story needs a villain. Every story needs a secret.

Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Wink. Poppy. Midnight. Two girls. One boy. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.

What really happened? Someone knows. Someone is lying.

Wink, Poppy, Midnight. 3 completely different characters with 3 completely different personalities than what we are aware of. One's a hero, one's a villain and one is a liar? But who is who? Midnight, the shy quiet one. Wink, the strange and out there girl. Poppy, Midnight's girl next door who can easily manipulate you.

I absolutely enjoyed how Tucholke decided to write this story. The 3 different perspectives, with each one written so definable for their character. You know that Midnight is your main character - but that Wink and Poppy are just as important, especially their point-of-views, as Midnight is. But because you are mainly getting the gist through Midnight's eyes you tend to lean toward him being the hero.

Throughout the entire book you will be trying to guess who is who. It doesn't help that the cover blatantly asks you who's the hero, who's the villain and who's the liar. You then realize that you really can't trust any of the characters. Which goes against everything you've been taught about reading. You pick up a book and you trust the main character. You rarely every think "Maybe this character is lying to me, maybe they're painting this in a better light". You just automatically assume that the character is telling the truth. That's the complete opposite when you pick up this book.

My one problem with this book was that I was hooked about 3/4 of the way through the book. I enjoyed the writing style, so that got me through the first half. I was then a little worried that I had made it halfway through the book and I wasn't dying to know what was happening next. It didn't sit well with me. I got through the next quarter of the book and THEN I was hooked. There's one exact moment when I realized "Oh! Oh wow! This is good!" and it happened too far into the story for me.