A review by wildflowercrypt
Wilder Girls by Rory Power

medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

i kept reading because i found the prose engaging and the atmosphere kinda cool, but this plot made very little sense, even for YA. the pages in the back refer to it as a “feminist Lord of the Flies” and i don’t know but that feels like overselling the story we do get, by a lot.

very little of importance happens in this story with only cursory  explanations as to how or why. yeah, yeah, yeah,
climate change! parasite! the next big misstep in the evolutionary process!
but none of those things are explored in any kind of meaningful way; they serve as setting dressing, nothing more, and are almost immediately brushed over and moved past once revealed.

additional gripes w/ explicit spoilers:
what the fuck was that random-ass cooler in the middle of the woods about? it never gets brought back up. why was it there, with a vial of a non-cure inside??? felt like a dropped plot line. additionally, throughout the story, we see Hetty struggle immensely with guilt for keeping secrets, breaking quarantine, bringing the gas back to the school, etc. etc. etc. yet apparently she also has zero issue abandoning the other girls to be mauled to death by the bear. yeah, ok, cause that makes sense. also, how did the research team even know quarantine had been broken in the first place? Hetty and Reese were never caught; it’s never addressed: the research team just Knows, somehow, magically, that quarantine was broken. Hetty also gives Reese very little fucking time to cope with the fate of her father— whether that’s really him or not, watching your girlfriend (?) kill the last remaining vestige of your dad is going to fucking hurt. ofc she needs time to process that, don’t be an ass. ugh.
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