Some people relax by staying as far from risk as possible, and some people can’t feel awake unless they’re a few feet from a cliff edge. Wilder by Rebecca Yarros puts one of each on a ship for nine months and lets the friction do the work. Leah Baxter is a scholarship student who follows the rules because she can’t afford not to, and Paxton Wilder is a twenty-two-year-old X Games medalist and daredevil influencer who treats rules as suggestions and homework as an inconvenience. I enjoyed my time with them, but I never landed on loving it the way I’ve loved Yarros‘s other books, and that gap is the whole story of how I feel about this first installment in The Renegades series.
What Wilder Is About
The setup is simple enough to explain on a ship’s welcome banner. After two lost years, Leah wants a wake-up call for her life, so she signs up for a nine-month work-study cruise called Study at Sea, where she’ll see the world and, with any luck, find whatever she misplaced along the way. Her scholarship depends on tutoring a single student, and of course it turns out to be Paxton, the leader of a group of adrenaline-chasing athletes called the Renegades. Documentary cameras, fans, and high-octane stunts follow him everywhere, and he has to pass his classes to keep the whole operation going, which is a problem because a man who plans stunts around the globe is not exactly sitting in the front row of a lecture hall. Four other friends round out the group, and Wilder is the first of three books in the series, with each book putting a different member of the group in the spotlight.
Leah and Paxton: Caution Meets Thrill Seeking
The psychology of this pairing is the most fun part to think about. Paxton reads as textbook sensation-seeking, someone who needs novelty and physical risk to feel fully switched on, while Leah’s approach to life centers on avoiding exactly the kind of gamble he treats as a hobby. Put those two together and you have a natural test of misattribution of arousal, the well-known idea that a racing heart and sweaty palms can be read as fear or as attraction depending on the situation you’re standing in. Yarros surrounds them with stunts and cameras, so it’s easy to see why they’d struggle to tell which feeling is which. Leah’s two lost years also give her a clear motive for being on that ship, since she is actively trying to reclaim something, and that gives the book a strong emotional question at its center: can she loosen up without losing the careful instincts that have kept her afloat? Paxton has a question of his own, because a person whose life is a public performance for a documentary crew has plenty of reasons to keep a lot of himself off camera.
Why I Liked Wilder but Didn’t Love It
As for how it landed with me, I enjoyed Wilder, and I’m glad I read it, but it didn’t reach the level of Yarros’s other books, and I noticed that gap. A story with this much built in should carry a reader along easily, and it did hold my interest, but it never produced the pull that makes me rearrange my evening to keep reading. Part of that may be structural. As the opening book in a trilogy, Wilder has to introduce a friend group of six, establish the world of the Study at Sea program, and lay groundwork for two more books that belong to other characters, so Leah and Paxton’s romance shares the page with a lot of setup. I can’t say that setup is the only reason it landed below her other work, but it does make the book feel more like the first chapter of something bigger than a story that stands entirely on its own.
That distinction matters for what comes next. I do plan to read the rest of The Renegades series, since I’m curious about the other five friends and how each of them fares once they get a book of their own, but I didn’t finish Wilder feeling like I had to start book two immediately. Some books end and leave you hunting for the sequel before you’ve closed the cover, and this wasn’t one of those for me. I’d call it a solid, enjoyable read that earned a spot on my list without jumping to the front of it, and I’ll probably let a few other books cut the line first.
Who Should Read Wilder
If you like opposites-attract romance, a cruise ship setting, and a rule follower paired with the guy who breaks every rule, Wilder is built for you. Readers who enjoy series where each book follows a different friend will likely get more out of it, since it works as the launch pad for the whole trilogy, and fans of Rebecca Yarros who want to work through more of her books will find plenty to keep them going. If you’re new to Yarros, though, I’d start with her stronger books and come to Wilder afterward. I’d recommend it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to rush it to the top of a reading list.
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