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Reviewed by: Lisa Rice, Middle School Librarian Title: Wander in the Dark
Author: Jumata Emill
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Year: 2024 Good for Grades: 9-12 Genre/Type of Book: YA mystery, suspense, thriller, social justice
Content Warnings, or things that other School Librarians should be aware of: drugs, underage drinking, talk about sex, swearing, bloody death, violence
Recommended for a school library: Yes Reason(s) for choosing the book: The cover has a creepy vibe (dark, with splatters of blood), and the setting is Mardi Gras in New Orleans- it sounded like a great read!
If you were tasked by the publisher with writing a short quote for the back cover of this book, what would it be:
"Emmett Till was abducted, brutally beaten, and lynched just for being accused of flirting with a white woman. Not much has changed since then" (Amir, page 64).
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Review:
Wander in the Dark will appeal to high school students who are looking for a good murder/mystery/thriller, all rolled into one! The New Orleans setting is fun, and some of these high schoolers in the book have a pretty nice life- "business casual" parties where everyone shows up in formal wear, great cars, beautiful magazine-worthy homes- I was wishing I could relate! Other kids lead a completely different lifestyle and that sets up one of the many social justice issues in this book.
The book is told through the perspectives of two brothers who have two completely different lifestyles, Amir and his younger brother Marcel. Marcel is gay, and Amir is a black boy who hangs out with a rich white girl, which also sets up social justice issues in this book. Amir gets invited to Marcel's party by Chloe, a girl he likes. After some family drama, Amir agrees to give Chloe a ride home and ends up hanging out at her house until the wee hours of the morning. When Amir wakes up on her couch alone, he discovers that Chloe has been murdered in her bedroom. Amir runs out of the house and throws away the clothes he has been wearing because he knows how it will look if a poor black boy is associated with this crime scene and he is not wrong. "Black dudes who wake up in a white girl's house and find her dead run. And we run because we don't get the benefit of the doubt" (Amir, page 64). Amir gets booked for first degree murder.
To understand parts of this book, I needed a teenager sitting with me- a lot of spoken slang and slang in texts that I was pretty sure I could figure out what the characters meant, but who knows!? High schoolers reading this book probably won't be stumped! It is also one of those books where the teens are smarter than the cops, investigators, lawyers, and all the adults involved and manage to solve the crime themselves. I always think that is a bit unrealistic, but maybe that's just based on the teens that I personally know. Some parts just seemed unrealistic, even for a fiction book. While that bothered me, others may look past certain things.
While it was a good murder mystery/thriller, I appreciated the important issues that drive this book- privilege, entitlement, family issues, social injustice, racial injustice, blended families, and minority stereotyping. The author's bluntness about these issues made me stop and think and I appreciated that. The story is told through a social commentary lense and asks how does your position in life affect how you are treated? Rich/poor, male/female, white/black- how does your lot in life make your life easier or harder? "Black men are seven times more likely to get wrongfully convicted of murder than white people. Not just white men- white people as a whole." (Amir, page 84). This would be a good book to read in or recommend to students studying social justice issues in America today. This book also addresses the role social media plays in teenagers' lives.
I would use this book for a book club in a high school library. There is some discussion of sex in the book, but I can see some great discussions coming from reading this book that would make it worthwhile. There is a mystery to solve and a lot of other issues to solve that will take more than a book club for sure.
Number of party hats:
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For more information about this book, see the publisher's website.