Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell - Review

Rainbow Rowell is not a perfect author, I want to clarify this first. There is a lot of criticism on the internet of her writing, and I do agree wholeheartedly with the critiques of Eleanor & Park (a book that, unless some serious changes are made, should not be made into a movie). 

But I do love a lot of what she has written, and I do also love the way that she writes. Landline was one of the first “adult” books I read of my own choosing (i.e, that wasn’t given to me by my mother) and I absolutely adored it. So much so that, after having borrowed it from the library I went and bought my own copy. Furthermore, from the age of thirteen, Fangirl has been my favourite book. With that novel, Rowell cast a fishing line right into my soul and I am yet to swim myself free of it. I am now older than Cath ever is in that book, I am out of university, I have even written my own Simon Snow-fanfiction and last Christmas I was gifted a hardback copy because my paperback has fallen apart. 

And then, Rowell announced that she was writing Carry On, Simon. And I didn’t love it. I loved the love story (who couldn’t), but the plot? I couldn’t bring myself to care about it. I found every side character annoying (sorry Penny and Agatha, I do come around to you both) and I truly did not care about the Mage’s plan. I thought the wings were about the most interesting thing the narrative had in store. 

So, I didn’t rush to buy Wayward Son. It wasn’t until I saw the controversy on tumblr that I was even really tempted to buy it. But the controversy was loud, and I did love Simon and Baz, so I gave it try, expectations low. 

This time, I loved it. Wayward Son is a breeze compared to Carry On, much shorter and much, much snappier. You can tell Rowell feels more comfortable here, mostly because it’s set in her home country of America, but also because she’s doing what she does best, deconstructing a messy relationship that the reader cannot help but want to see succeed. Some fans didn’t like Wayward Son because it wasn’t a published fanfiction in the way that Carry On was, but for me, that was exactly why I loved it. Plus, when they’re all suddenly out of their comfort zones, the characters get much more interesting. With Shephard to ricochet off, Penny becomes less annoying and, in a world completely free from Simon and Baz, Agatha comes into herself. But anyway, this isn’t a review of Wayward Son, but I just felt I should establish how I’m coming into AWTWB. 

I have already demonstrated on my Instagram story how beautiful this book is, but, when I was about a quarter of the way in, I was already disappointed. In returning to England, we seemed to return to some of the issues I had with Carry On. The pacing for me is way off, and the plot does not feel planned. I really took issue with how quickly Simon went from breaking up with Baz to understanding that all their problems were his fault and very easily deciding to do better. I say very easy because, despite constantly telling the reader how hard it is for Simon not to walk away, there’s nothing in the plot to show that. But, then again, this is the last book in the trilogy, so maybe I should be more forgiving. 

I ploughed on ahead. I am glad to say that Agatha remained just as interesting in this book as she is in Wayward Son. Rowell gave her a queer love story for Merlin’s sake, I was always going to love her story. I did fall for the relationship that blossomed between Shephard and Penny, too. Their demon wedding storyline was interesting, but ultimately meaningless. It was a shame that Shephard’s usefulness after that point completely dropped off, his only existence to be someone that Simon can talk about sandwiches with. All in all, the stakes felt unbelievably low in this book. Smith Smith-Richards never felt like a real threat, and he was defeated with relative ease. The bigger threat, I suppose, was the pregnant doe dying, and that was the stronger half of the finale, for me. 

And then there’s the reason why we’re all here. Simon and Baz. As much as I didn’t really like it, I understand why Rowell had Snowbaz get back together so quickly, the pushback from the fandom after Wayward Son was immense because they were barely together in that book. AWTWB is filled to the brim with Snowbaz content, some of it much more explicit than I was expecting. Nothing too much, of course, but I started reading about these characters at 13, and I guess I hadn’t realised that it had grown up with me. Their relationship is still compelling to read about, and I loved watching Simon slowly realising what he wants from life, but overall, this story didn’t grab me. 

Like all Rowell’s books do for me (except for, ironically enough, E&P) this ends too soon. The final page of Fangirl always takes me by surprise and this book is no exception. I gasped when I turned the page of the Epilogue to find nothing but acknowledgements. Despite Rowell making it explicitly clear that this is the last book in this world, I got no closure from it. In the last section, Simon magically finds himself a caring family, a sword again, and the knowledge that he was a Mage after all. But he still can’t do magic, he hasn’t properly accepted the Salisburys, and what use is a sword anymore? I did like that he kept his wings, though. 

Sadly, this book is a 3 out 5 for me. Trust me, I wish it was more.