THE SIMPLE WILD – K. A. TUCKER

**Spoilers Ahead, Read On With Caution**

Contrary to its title, THE SIMPLE WILD is anything but simple. It’s heartbreaking, witty and overly descriptive to the point where you find yourself looking up flights to Alaska. And sadly I don’t have a spare seventeen plus hours to fly out, or any holiday time I can use at work until after April, I can’t go. I can however, read this book to my hearts content and live vicariously through Calla, Wren, Jonah, Agnes, Mabel, Simon and Susan.

“And people either like that way of life or they don’t; there’s no real in-between. People like Wren and Jonah, they find they can’t stay away from it for too long. And people like Susan, well . . . they never warm up to it. They fight the challenges instead of embracing them, or at least learning to adapt to them.” Agnes pauses, her mouth open as if weighing whether she should continue. “I don’t agree with the choices Wren made where you’re concerned, but I know it was never a matter of him not caring about you. And if you want to blame people for not trying, there’s plenty of it to go around.” Agnes turns to smile at me then. “Or you could focus on the here-and-now, and not on what you can’t change.”

THE SIMPLE WILD starts off by showing us a moment between Wren Fletcher, his wife Susan, and their daughter, Calla. With Wren being a bush pilot for his own company called Alaska Wild, choosing to not leave. Susan however, does, and with their baby girl. She’s a Toronto girl who fell deeply in love with Wren, a “sky cowboy”, got pregnant and married soon after. She’s not for the vast stretches of land, and the loneliness that be paired with this way of life. Simply getting on a plane, and being gone. We then cut to Calla’s life in Toronto, twenty four years later and just being reconstructed out of her bank job. Getting a phone call later that night from a neighbour of her dads alerting her to the fact that he’s got lung cancer, and would love for her to visit. With a lot of umming and ahhing, Calla finally agrees. Upon her arrival in Anchorage, she meets up with Jonah (a hot pilot who works for her dad) and gets in a tiny plane with him for the rest of their journey to Bangor. From here we get to witness Calla navigate the day to days of reconnecting with her father, and handling the Yeti man living next door, who seems all too happy to make an enemy out of her already.

“What hold does Alaksa have on them? What makes this place worth giving everything else up?”

I waited for so long to be able to read this book, as I knew I wanted to get it once I hit the States. Buying it on Amazon just feel right, and I wanted to experience hunting it down in Barnes and Noble, and so I did. I found it, and held off on reading it as I was already part way through VERITY, and wanted to have a moment where I could read it, fully relax into it, and drink in the words. And let me tell you; it was worth every moment of waiting. I fully broke down at the end of this book, as I wasn’t expecting the emotions to hit me quite as hard as they did, but it was truly so damn sad. And for the book to go from making me laugh at the yeti descriptions of Jonah at the beginning, to have tears falling for Wren at the end, is one hell of a rollercoaster. I was engaged and present the entire novel, and couldn’t bare to put it down. That being said, I did put it down for twenty minutes the closer to the conclusion I got. I didn’t want it to ever end. Not for me, or for Wren.

“And just like that, I sense a circle closing. Back to the beginning, and near to the end.”

The descriptions of Alaska were stunning, and had me immediately looking for instagram accounts that showcase Alaskan photography. It literally made me yearn to go visit. I’m so deeply bitten by the travel bug, that it’s genuinely upsetting to me at this point that I feel so trapped. I want big open spaces and accents I haven’t come across before. I want to fall in love with my surrounding, and not settle for less. THE SIMPLE WILD reignited that desire. The way that Calla, a girl who live and breathes the city life, tried to embrace Alaska because it was apart of her dad and his life, was eyeopening. And her constant back and forth with Jonah (another pilot, one who works for her dad) was just the added level of ligtheartedness. 

From reading this book, you will laugh, cry, laugh some more, roll your eyes, sniffle and full blown sob. You’ll also want to hug your parents a bit too.