This is a joint review by Carrie and AJ.  Wayward Son is the second book in a spinoff series —  you might also want to check out Carrie’s review for the previous book, Carry On, and Sarah’s review for the book that started it all, Fangirl.

Carrie: Wayward Son is the sequel to Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell. If you haven’t read Carry On yet, go do that. I’ll try to avoid spoilers for Carry On here, but some are inevitable. I recommend reading Carry On first anyway, since there’s a lot of plot and character development in that book that sets up this one.

Seriously, you guys. I really can’t explain this book without revealing MAJOR SPOILERS for Carry On. At a bare minimum, you’ll know who lives, who dies, and who ends up with whom. Also the review won’t make any sense.

AJ: I was three pages into Wayward Son when Rainbow Rowell came into my house and personally punched me in the face with Emotions. Two pages later she did it again, but from Simon’s point of view this time. By page ten, my roommate told me to stop making faces and gasping like a Victorian maiden.

Reader, I could not.

Spoilers ahead.

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Wayward Son opens a year or so after the events of Carry On. Technically, there was a happy ending to that story: Simon Snow saved the World of Mages, defeated the bad guy, and got the boy of his dreams. However, things are not going so great for our erstwhile Chosen One post-victory. In fact, we start out with an epilogue (yeah, you read that right) pointing out that when stories end, there’s no ‘after’ for the hero.

This is what happens if you try to hang on after the end. When your time has come and passed. When you’ve done the thing you were meant to do.

What happens? Well. A lot, actually.

Carrie: Wayward Son begins with Simon, Baz, Agatha, and Penelope preparing for life after Watford School of Magics. Baz and Penelope are in uni in London. Agatha is in uni in San Diego. Simon lives with Baz and Penelope and lies on the couch. He was in therapy but stopped going. All of the main characters are healing from trauma, but Simon is not only deeply traumatized and grieving but has also lost the one thing that always made him important. Simon feels worthless and is convinced that Baz is only with him out of pity.

Penelope interrupts all this romantic angst (and a very realistic portrait of clinical depression and trauma) to announce that she and Baz and Simon are going to go to America for a road trip holiday during which they will visit Agatha. None of them are able to grasp the size of America which leads to Penelope deciding that they will visit her long-distance boyfriend in Chicago “on the way” to San Diego. They fly into Chicago (on a plane, not magically) and Penelope rents them a truly beautiful convertible.

And then…Penelope’s boyfriend dumps her, it turns out that she didn’t make reservations anywhere, Agatha won’t answer her phone, and they realize that driving to San Diego will take thirty one hours:

“I thought we wanted a road trip,” I say, getting in the car.

“Three hours is a road trip,” Baz says. “With a nice picnic break in the middle. This is three days of driving-and we only have seven days left before we fly home.” He sneers at Penny. “‘We’ll just stop in Chicago on our way to San Diego,’ she said.”

Penny is still looking at her phone. “How was I to know that all these middle states are each the size of France? I’ve never even heard of Nebraska.”

“Well, we’re going to spend a full day there,” Baz says, “so you’ll know it now.”

The ensuing plot involves, among other things, character development, the vampire city of Las Vegas, dead magic areas, magical rules in America which are not the same as the rules in the U.K., exploration of the prejudice that people with magic feel towards “Normals,” a New Age Cult called NowNext, a renaissance faire, a Stonehenge made of cars, and a Normal named Shepard who refuses to go away. It’s funny, it’s angsty, it’s sweet. It’s also graphically violent FYI.

Here are some things to know:

1. Therapy is regarded in a positive light, YAY.
2. Baz, a vampire, thinks that if he bites humans he will kill them, so instead he eats animals including domestic birds, cats, and dogs, usually off page but not in the case of the birds. Baz is portrayed as sympathetic but ill-informed and malnourished.
3. Native Americans, yet again, do not get the representation they deserve in magical worldbuilding.
4. It ends on a cliffhanger.

AJ: Everything happened so much.

This book reads, and I mean this in the best possible way, like fanfiction of itself. Which makes sense, because it’s essentially just that. Rowell came up with the characters as a plot point in her book Fangirl, in which the heroine Cath writes fanfic for the popular “Simon Snow” book series. Then she took the fic that Cath was writing and turned it into a book of its own (Carry On). Now with Wayward Son, the fictional series has become a real series, but only in the form of a post-canon roadtrip AU. It’s, like, super meta, man.

One way this reads like a fanwork is that Rowell doesn’t spend any time catching us up on the characters or the world. There’s no ‘previously on …’ section where the characters reminisce about the Insidious Humdrum and the Mage and their history as schoolmates-slash-enemies. She doesn’t explain how Baz and Simon got together or how their magic works. We’re just dropped right on the couch with Simon, his wings, and his clinical depression.

The unspoken assumption is that we know the backstory already, because we’ve all read the book five times and then spent hours obsessively scrolling the SnowBaz ship tag on Ao3 and wishing for more content. (No? Just me? Okay then.) If that’s not the case for you, then I think the lack of context might be a bit jarring.

If you are already invested, then you’ll probably experience a lot of Feels. The first few chapters are visceral and tender in their portrayal of Simon and Baz’s struggle to cope with the reality of life after the Humdrum. They won, they fell in love, and that was supposed to be enough. But surprise! It isn’t. That normal life they thought they wanted is just as hard as fighting evil, and much more complicated. Also, and I say this with love, they have the emotional maturity of a pair of slightly concussed hamsters.

However, after the initial hit of angst, the rest of the book didn’t quite carry on* that emotional intensity. There were a few good character moments, but the bulk of the story was more focused on action. It’s a road trip novel. There was a lot of ground for the characters to cover, both literally and figuratively. (Nebraska is big, Penny. Really big.)

(*See what I did there?)

The tone change leads to kind of a weird see-saw in terms of focus. Is this a character story or a plot story? Do we care more about the weird cult shenanigans, or about whether a change of scene can finally give Simon and Baz space to let go of the past? What did Penelope order from room service? In the end, I don’t think that the story quite decided what it wanted to be.

Also, and I can’t stress this more without going into spoiler territory, there is a cliffhanger ending. You will want things to be resolved that do not get resolved. You will end up back on Ao3 in a huff. Don’t @ me. (Actually, do @ me and let’s scream together.)

Carrie: In short, if you loved Carry On for the characters, you will love this book. It was flawed yet I was helpless before its powers. I’d follow these characters everywhere. But if you jump in with this book first, the dynamics won’t make sense and neither will the world-building or most of the plot points. Also can any of our UK readers confirm whether a twenty-year-old Brit with minimal exposure to the mundane world would lack knowledge of how big the USA is?

AJ: Should you read this book? Well, that depends. Do U like internal conflict? R U down for mildly horny descriptions of the characters’ hair and clothes? (I want — nay, I need — Baz’s blue suit, guys.) How do you feel about characters who literally never use their words, not even once, oh my god you guys please talk to each other you are killing me …

… ahem.

Like Carrie said, if you love Simon and Baz and Penny and want to know how they’re doing, then yes, this book is for you. If you had a rough transition from ‘promising’ teenagerhood to ‘normal’ young adulthood, this book is probably also for you. If you like fanfic in your fanfic so you can read fanfic about fanfic … you get where I’m going here. (Is that meme still alive? Am I officially An Old? Sound off in the comments.)

This story isn’t perfect, and it’s A Lot, but it also has A Lot to offer. I read it in one massive hyperfocus marathon punctuated by incoherent squeaking, and I can’t wait to go back and savor it.

Carrie: The truth is, I fully intended to jam through this book in one glorious reading session but I love the characters so much that I read it as slowly as I could. I cannot quantify how much I adore these mixed up, terrible at communicating, trying to figure things out babies. Naturally, I adore Baz and Simon but I also love all the other characters. I guess there was a plot, I dunno, it’s fine. Like Simon, I just liked riding around in the car. On the one hand I’m desperate for the next book and on the other hand it was wonderful for these characters to have some space, geographical and personal, in which to just be. Also Simon and Baz’s very different impressions of America? PRICELESS. The mix of humor and angst, turmoil and peace was everything I needed right now.