Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke

I don’t remember teenagers being such psychos – even when I was one! – but everyone in Wink Poppy Midnight is crazy cakes. If the author had stuck with one POV or written third person omniscient, I would have probably loved this. The lyrical style to the writing was lovely and the imagery was whimsical and chilling.

Of course, every time I came across a new fairytale, I had to write it down so I could look it up later. I loved the structure of the plot and the use of fairytales. Midnight needed to become his own person, away from Wink and Poppy. I was happy with the actions he takes at the end. Midnight is a little spineless and honestly needs to stop letting girls lead him around by the ‘you know what’. Her motives turned out to be more selfish than I thought. I don’t want to reveal too much but I was unhappy with the evolution of Wink’s character. She is just the type of witchy and interesting character I tend to like in stories. I also found it annoying that she was so obsessed with Leaf while he seemed to not care anything for her and was so ugly to Midnight, who might have genuinely cared about her if she hadn’t been so horrible to him. I found Poppy childish, like a toddler having an embarrassing tantrum in the middle of a store, and unappealing as a character. I tend to not care about characters that have no redeeming qualities and thus didn’t really care if she was dead or not or what she was doing with her apparent cryptic letter writing. I also find it hard to really care about characters that are just all over nasty and Poppy’s cruel, manipulative, and sexualized behavior irritated me. I was never able to connect with the story or the characters. We never settle into one character for long and I found this kept me from really sinking into the story. Wink Poppy Midnight is a small book at 247 pages and POV jumps between the three characters named in the book’s title. There is a Wicked Witch, a Wolf, and a Hero in Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke, in that order. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.

Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Genre: Paranormal, Magical Realism, Messed-up Teenagers, Mystery Wink Poppy Midnight by April Genevieve Tucholke