'Cassie Cotton has always been unusual, a bit different - but this only makes her more intriguing to her classmate Fitz.
'Cassie can hear a noise that most people don't notice or recognise, and she believes it's a sound that shows the Earth is in distress, damaged by human activity that is causing climate change.
'When this belief leads to her being ridiculed and bullied at school, Cassie disappears. Fitz is determined to find her, but he has no idea where to start looking, or if he'll be in time to help her...'
Wrath tells the story of Cassie Cotton, a teenage girl who's been struggling during the Covid lock-down, who's been hearing this strange humming noise, and who suddenly goes missing one day. Left behind with no idea what might have happened to her, her best friend Fitz tries desperately to figure out what could have happened to Cassie.
Wrath is the latest children's book release from publisher Barrington Stoke, a publisher that has been producing some excellent children's reads. Normally with their books there's a theme to them, a topic that they're dealing with in some way. Sometimes this is a story about wildfires that help raise awareness of nature and global warming, or stories about a family struggling to get by that teaches young readers about poverty and how hard some people in the UK have it. Often the themes are pretty obvious, and central to the book; but it took me a while to see the central themes in Wrath.
The book begins with Cassie, already being missing. She's just vanished and people are still trying to figure out when she might have disappeared, and where she could have gone. One of these people is Fitz, one of her best friends, her band-mate, and someone who secretly has a crush on her. Over lock-down Cassie had been messaging Fitz, as well as secretly meeting him in the middle of the night, telling him about a strange humming sound that she's been hearing.
As the days pass, Cassie keeps insisting that she can hear the hum, that it's always there when its quiet, and that she thinks it the sound of the earth itself. Whilst Fitz wants to be a good friend to her, he can't hear the sound, and as the days pass other people hear about Cassie's sound, and start mocking her for it. When Fitz stupidly agrees with one of his friends that Cassie might be crazy she overhears this, and it's the last time that he sees her before she vanishes.
With the police searching for her, Fitz believes that the sound might be connected with her disappearance somehow, and starts to search through everything she sent him about it. Desperate to find his friend, to tell her he's sorry, and that he loves her, Fitz will go to impossible lengths to get her back.
Wrath tells its story across a series of flashbacks, scattered over the days when Cassie goes missing, showing both how Fitz is dealing with his friend being gone, as well as what led them both to this point. The story unfolds slowly, with small pieces of the puzzle being handed to readers as Fitz starts to piece together what might have happened. Because of this, it's not clear at first what might be going on.
For the longest time I was left wondering if perhaps there would be some kind of supernatural element to the book, that the hum would be something real, something that could have whisked Cassie away from her home. Whilst there's no explanation for the hum by the end of the book, it eventually becomes clear that this is a much more down to earth story; one about relationships and wanting to escape.
You see, Cassie is going through a difficult home life leading up to her disappearance. Yes, she has both parents living with her, and they're pretty rich, a stark contrast to Fitz who lives with his father and struggles to get by, but thanks to her parents relationship going through a rough patch she's living in a house filled with constant arguments. She's being subjected to shouts and screams, the sound of broken things, and is trying to drown that noise out. Her disappearance is as much about escaping her family as it is trying to figure out what the hum is.
The relationship between her and Fitz is also given a lot of weight, and most of the scenes in the book involve the two of them, or at least relate to their connection with each other. Fitz is either spending time with Cassie, thinking about her, searching for her, or wanting to make things better with her. And this huge focus he has on her could have easily come across as creepy, some kind of teen obsession, yet it doesn't. There's another character in the book who is written this way, and there's such a sharp contrast between him and Fitz; you see that Fitz isn't some love-struck teen, desperate to just possess the girl he loves, but an actual decent person with a damn fine heart.
By the end of Wrath its clear that this is a story about love, about relationships, and about escaping the things that bring you pain. It shows how those around you can be hurt by your actions, even if you don't think so. Cassie was hurt by her parents, and her leaving hurt Fitz. But ultimately it's these connections that help save her come the end, that ground Cassie and show her that she doesn't have to face the huge, frightening world all on her own. And because of that, I think the book has a wonderful message behind it.
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