A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!“The perfect kind of story for our current era.”—HypableFrom the author of Burn Our Bodies Down, a feminist Lord of the Flies about three best friends living in quarantine at their island boarding school, and the lengths they go to uncover the truth of their confinement when one disappears. This fresh debut is a mind-bending novel unlike anything you’ve read before.… fresh debut is a mind-bending novel unlike anything you’ve read before.
It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there’s more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.
And don’t miss Rory Power’s second novel, Burn Our Bodies Down!
Praise for Wilder Girls:
4 STARRED REVIEWS!
“Take Annihilation, add a dash of Contagion, set it at an all-girls’ academy, and you’ll arrive at Rory Power’s occasionally shocking and always gripping Wilder Girls.”—Refinery29
“This thrilling saga…is sure to be one of the season’s most talked-about books, in any genre.”—EW
“Fresh and horrible and beautiful….readers will be consumed and altered by Wilder Girls.”—NPR
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Creepy and mysterious. I couldn’t put it down!
I’m going to start out by writing that this was a good book. And it was. I was expecting more though. More horror and more chaos and more young women bucking authority. I kept seeing Wilder Girls by Rory Power all over the socials and people were giving it outstanding reviews. So I was expecting more.
I kept seeing it being compared to Lord of the Flies. The young women don’t go against the two older women in charge and they don’t take over the house. They go along with not having enough food to eat, no medications, being cold, and the fear of not knowing what will happen next. It isn’t until Byatt is taken to the locked wing because she’s deteriorated so badly that two of the girls finally escape the contained area to find her. And then, finally, in the last quarter of the book the girls start to fight back but only because an unnatural creature forces them too. And still only Hetty and Reese question the status quo as they try to escape, leaving all the other girls behind.
Often with horror there isn’t a lot (or any) backstory. You get thrown right into the action. The main characters are trying to stay alive. And there’s no time for backstory. Only going forward, either to their death or to be the final girl. But with Wilder Girls since everyone was laying around the house and the only horror was the changes in their bodies (granted, they were major and sometimes deadly changes) I needed more backstory about the disease.
And then towards the end, which came really quickly, after such a slow beginning, we finally learn a little about the disease, but it felt like just a teeny tiny blip in the story. And once again, I needed more.
An interesting concept with lots of potential but I needed more.
i enjoyed this book and it was a fun and easy read
Fast Paced Story Which Needed More Character Development to Get Me Emotionally Invested
Full disclosure: This review is based on the audio book version.
I am torn on this one. I thought the concept of the story was original, solid-paced and full of kick-ass teen girls, and I enjoyed the read…but I didn’t LOVE it and I so wanted to. I think what was lacking for me was the character development. In this story, I needed to care more about the characters in order for me to really care about what was happening to them and for this story it was crucial. The pacing overshadowed the character development and in the end it left me feeling meh about the book.
Delightfully creepy! Girls being bad! I really enjoyed the build up and the twisted nature of the affliction. The characters and world-building elements were interesting. The ending wasn’t what I’d hoped, but still a tantilizing read!
There was literally so much to love about this book. The sapphic horror, the environmental disaster, the gorgeous cover.
The novel takes place on an isolated, atmospheric island where the girls have been attending boarding school when this plague hit. The Tox is definitely one of the better plagues or illnesses I’ve read recently; the symptoms are both beautiful and horrifying, disfiguring the girls’ bodies in ways that are unique to each character and reflect the degradation of the environment around them. Some girls are gifted with glowing hair, others have painful and ugly protrusions. The background of the Tox is never really explained, and the reader is dropped in in media res, so the action and adventure begins almost immediately.
Hetty, Byatt, and Reese, our three main characters, are so intertwined with one another in different ways. The author isn’t concerned with making her characters likable, pretty, or kind, but rather for them to function as survivors in this setting that will eat them alive. Their relationships with each other and the people in their lives aren’t healthy, and that’s part of the appeal of this book. These are girls with shifting loyalties, cunning, conniving, and tough, that the reader can love and sometimes hate in equal measure. I just love unreliable and sometimes unlikable narrators so much, especially when they’re teenage girls, who I feel always get a bad rap.
The only reason it doesn’t have five stars is that I felt it didn’t live up to the hype in one way: online marketing, especially on social media, pushed the idea that this book was the pinnacle of “YA gruesome body horror” and I feel like the book definitely leaned more into the atmospheric than the graphic. And the atmosphere is fantastic, in a way that leaves chills up your spine and will stick with you for days afterward, but it was definitely a different book than I expected.
I’m going to start off by saying that I have not read Lord of the Flies. I’ve heard from a few people that Wilder Girls is a gender swapped retelling of Lord of the Flies, so I’m not sure how it compares, but this was a powerful book. There are hundreds of books in the young adult genre that show how mean girls can be. Rather than portraying Hetty and her friends as typical “mean girls”, Wilder Girls shows just how hideous teenage girls can really be, both mentally and physically.
The story follows an all-girls boarding school on a remote island off the coast of Maine. For some time, the school and its inhabitants have been plagued by a disease known as the Tox. The Tox has significantly reduced the school’s student, faculty, and staff population and turned those who remain into survivalists. The naval base on the mainland sends weekly supply drops, but eventually those stop and the girls who remain are on their own.
The book alternates between Hetty and her best friend Byatt’s point of view. While more time is spent inside Hetty’s head, the time we spend with Byatt is more unsettling and frightening due to the circumstances she finds herself in. In addition to the different points of view, Power’s writing style is unique. Hetty’s thoughts are concise, and clear while Byatt’s are broken up and foggy, then curt. Perhaps it’s from her own experiences as a teenager, but I feel like my inner monologue must have been a lot like Hetty’s when I was in high school. She’s optimistic on the outside and realistic on the inside. She does this for the benefit of her friends and the other people around her so that they don’t break under the weight of the realization that no one is really trying to help them. If that doesn’t scream relatable teen angst, then I don’t know what does.
Wilder Girls is a beautiful and unique take on the boarding school setting. It’s a story about the power of friendship and about the lengths we would go to to survive. This is probably one of the best debut novels I’ve read in a while, and if you want an original take on a familiar story this is the book for you. I look forward to reading more from Rory Power in the future.
Every once in awhile a book comes along that takes my breath away.
One I can’t put down, this was that story for me.
Brilliant characters with a fantastic storyline.
Unlike anything I’ve read before and in all the good ways. I deliberately paced myself so much more slowly than usual, so I could savor it.
This book can be summed up like this: An infectious plague has hit an island where an all-girls school sits. They have been quarantined for 18 months, and have been surviving–literally and psychologically–however they can, with the sparse assistance of the government. When the main character’s best friend disappears, she decides she needs to find her, no matter the risk.
But holy crap on a cracker, it’s about so much more. I don’t want to give much away, so I’ll just say what I loved about the book:
– How factual the descriptions are of the physical, unique effects of the plague and how the girls deal with it.
– All of the relationship dynamics.
– The twists.
– The switching points of view.
– That the book doesn’t follow a straight, familiar formula of other plague books (or the like).
– The layers of meanings behind entire scenes, single sentences, the whole plot.
Goodness, is this book a wonder.
The only one I can think of that had a similar feel was SAWKILL GIRLS. Dark and thrumming and surprising–and also wonderful.
Okay, so this book is a bit tricky for me to rate but I decided on 3.5 stars, and I’m going to list what I loved about it and what I didn’t love so much to get me to that rating.
First off, the positive. The book’s setup was very vivid and detailed, which was amazing because I could literally see the girls transforming in front of my eyes as I read. The book takes place at an all girls’ academy that’s been plagued by a Tox and has been transforming the girls oddly. Some have an extra spine coming out of them, one of them’s hands morphed and webbed, etc. The girls were all wild–can you blame them? They’re stranded and goods and food are getting harder and harder to obtain–and the story really does remind me of Lord of the Flies, so that was VERY cool for me. A modern-day take on Lord of the Flies with queer rep. Um, heck yea! That translated wonderfully in this novel and I did enjoy that aspect. And what I also liked was the meaning behind the story and, in part, I enjoyed the reason behind the Tox. So clever, so I got to give props to the author. No spoilers, no worries, just wanted to say that unlike some people, the ending didn’t bother me and I enjoyed it. Very well-thought out.
Now, what I didn’t like so much, which, in a lot of ways, was purposeful for this novel so I don’t really see them as issues with the novel itself. I’m a character driven reader, so I love connecting personally with the characters, getting in their heads, learning all about them and I just didn’t connect with any character in particular. Most of them kind of fell flat for me and I was left wanting more, left wanting to like them like everyone else did, but I didn’t connect with them at all.
Now, this doesn’t say anything about the author’s ability to write because the writing was fantastic. It was a good story, I just don’t think this was the book for me. I think someone who enjoys thrillers, mysteries, and more atmospheric stories would eat up this novel and adore it.
I will be looking up the author in the future because I want to try to read her future novels because, as I said, she’s one fantastic writer.
I was really excited about this one. I mean, the cover, the synopsis, it just all sounded really good. But it took so long for anything really to happen. And then, when it did, it wasn’t really anything that exciting. It was about a third of the way through, and I got excited, but then, really nothing happened. We never really find out for sure what caused what they had. Or what the people in the world outside were doing. Had this actually affected the outside world? I’m guessing not. And what kind of experiment were they even doing? There were so many different offshoots of the story, and at the end when we start finding things out, they don’t all fit in, and something about climate change was inserted as if they were trying to make the story about that or something, but it all just really didn’t add up to anything. The ending was very inconclusive, not sure exactly what happened. It was also kind of hard to feel much for the characters, honestly, they weren’t really relatable, and nothing about them made me even that sympathetic to them. I’m sorry to say this one is the first book in a long time I’ve rated below a 3. As I saw another person say, if I hadn’t really kind of had to review this, I probably wouldn’t have actually finished it. But I just kept hoping the final answers would make all of the story worth it. Unfortunately they did not.
This is a wonderful book. Grabs your attention immediately and does not let you go. Strong, tough young women who face the challenges of life using whatever means they have at their disposal to survive.
-Description-
This is a YA book about an all girls school that has been quarantined. The book begins well over a year after Raxter School for Girls has been closed down and all access to and from the island stopped. The girls refer to their sickness (seemingly different for every person, every animal, and even every plant).
-Thoughts-
1. This is a super quick read. You really want to know right away what is going on, what is this sickness, who is in charge of the school or a cure. I enjoyed it as a young adult book and I think it’s perfect for kids that age, especially girls.
2. The theme of real, ride or die friendship is apparent in this book…which is why I think it’s great for the young adult age group. I think it really hits home. We consider our girlfriends to be our sisters, our family.
3. I craved more from this book. I wanted to know more before the book began and I wanted to know more about after it ended. I felt it would have rounded the characters out even more. The author could probably write a sequel and a prequel and I’d be all over that!
-Rating-
-Similar Recommended Reads-
Luckiest Girl Alive
Sadie
Turtles All the Way Down
*** 4.5 STARS ***
I received this book as an advance reader’s copy and I was so excited to read it, I couldn’t wait to finish the book I was reading at the time.
I was immediately sucked into the story within the first chapter – the first 7 pages.
***SPOILERS***
An all-girls school on Raxter Island in Maine becomes infected with the “Tox” and is isolated and quarantined on the island. Phone and internet access completely cut off. Kept away from their families. Information kept secret. Supplies are sent over from the mainland while the CDC supposedly search for a cure.
I was immediately pulled in by the cover. This is absolutely my most favorite cover of the year to date. The artwork is just absolutely incredible! I literally want this as a poster in my room!
Like others have, I’d also categorize the book as “dystopian feminist horror”, but not boogeyman-under-the-bed or jump-out-and-scare-the-sh*t-outta-me horror. This is 100% make-your-skin-crawl horror. There were times throughout the book (particularly in the last 1/3 of the book… i.e. THE WORM) that just made me shiver and cringe (good, horror-type cringing!)
I was pleasantly surprised that with the switching of the POV’s, between Hetty and Bryatt… but I would have LOVED to have had even just a snippet of Reese’s POV – she ended up becoming so prominent in the story. In my opinion, the author very tastefully added in LGBT elements without making it overbearing and too in-your-face.
Although this book is YA – one word of warning – there is LANGUAGE! Not overly prominent, but it’s there probably about a dozen times (again, also tastefully done!)
The ONLY reason for the 4.5 stars is because the ending left me wanting so much more!! I mean…. GIVE ME A SECOND BOOK ALREADY!!!