Wink Poppy Midnight (audiobook) by April Genevieve Tucholke

Wink Poppy Midnight

by April Genevieve Tucholke

Every story needs a hero.
Every story needs a villain.
Every story needs a secret.

Wink is the odd, mysterious neighbor girl, wild red hair and freckles. Poppy is the blond bully and the beautiful, manipulative high school queen bee. Midnight is the sweet, uncertain boy caught between them. Wink. Poppy. Midnight. Two girls. One boy. Three voices that burst onto the page in short, sharp, bewitching chapters, and spiral swiftly and inexorably toward something terrible or tricky or tremendous.

What really happened?
Someone knows.
Someone is lying. 

• Narrated By Michael Crouch, Alicyn Packard, Caitlin Davies
• Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins

I received a copy for review from readingteen.net

Told from three perspectives, Wink, Poppy, Midnight is a story about stories. Wink is a daydreamer and an avid reader, she narrates the story as a classic romantic fairytale. The Hero and romantic interest, Midnight the Villain and bully Poppy and Wink the protagonist who falls in love and also has to overcome heartbreak.

Midnight has just had his heart broken by the cruel Poppy. He thinks that moving further away will help him get over her. He becomes neighbors with Wink, who he finds an instant comfort in and they become inseparable. The only problem, Poppy still keeps showing up, because her true love and obsession is Wink's brother.

All three characters are so varied and layered, especially the girls'. The storyline brings out several different events that seem completely unrelated and almost questionable, until the end pulls everything together. I admit that I have never read anything as unusual as the story of these three characters lives. There were times that I could not tell which way the story was going to go, becoming very dark at times.

Overall the pacing is a constant stroll, dreamy days of reading in the rain, playing with the kids and falling in love with stories of all kinds. There is this underlying focus on the love of nature and they spend a lot of time outside. I felt the characters very relate-able and those of us who love to read may find an instant liking to Wink and her fantastical way of looking at the ordinary in life.

The narrators did a great job in bringing out the nature of each character. I absolutely despised Poppy and actually hearing the voice given to her made me a much more engaged listener. I feel I would have gotten a different and less potent imagery of this story if I had read a physical copy. I think the audiobook did it a lot of clarity bringing out the voice of the characters.