A review by slumbreon
Wilder Girls, by Rory Power
2.0
This is a book of which its beautiful cover does not do justice to the words of which it contains. Like most reviewers, I saw this cover, read the synopsis, and immediately put it on my radar. After waiting an (extremely) long time for this to come in from the library, I was eager to pick it up. I was hoping that I would be able to fall into its creepy, horrific insides with ease, and fly through it like the atmospheric thriller it is pitched as. The beginning of this book was fine. The middle was excruciatingly slow, and the ending was a complete let down.
Firstly, I want to say that as a debut novel, this is just fine. With more experience and practice, Powers can really fine tune things like exposition, pacing, and character development, as well as develop a more unique tone of writing. Set at an all girls boarding school on an island off the coast of wild Maine, Wilder Girls has the perfect setting for a creepy book. In a book with a ‘tox’ such as this one, the setting has the potential to come to life and become a character of its own, developing and influencing the plot as much as any of its inhabitants. Unfortunately, I don’t feel as though that is the case. There was hardly any exposition to orient the reader. Opting to drop the reader into the middle of the Tox in order to start off with a lot of momentum, Powers never goes back to fill in the gaps, leaving the reader to infer and guess as to the mechanics of the boarding school and the island on which it resides. While I’m not advocating for the reader to be spoonfed every last detail, it would have been beneficial to learn some basic details about things such as, you know, the Tox that is infecting and killing all the students and staff. Instead, the reader was just fed the same information about the abnormalities select girls received, and the fact that the oldest and youngest died off first, which… of course. That’s how illnesses work. Nevertheless, there were some glaring logistical issues that could have been solved with more exposition and background on the Tox and the boarding school.
Secondly, the characters in this novel were unlikeable, and not in a way in which they are supposed to have some literary merit that redeems them. It was a struggle to get myself to care about any of these girls. The relationships amongst Hetty, Byatt, and Reese, the three girls who are supposed to be friends as well as saving the day until Byatt goes missing, seemed forced. I would not have believed that these girls were friends had I not been explicitly told. While I appreciate the LGBT+ rep in this novel, I wish that it would have been more organic. There was no spark or hint of romance before Hetty and Reese kissed, and I was honestly thrown off when it occurred, not for want of seeing more girl/girl romance in books, but for how jarring it was to see two people with no connection suddenly in love. All of these characters had very similar voices, and it felt as though there was no emotional or intellectual growth for them throughout the novel. There was no change of mindset, even after harrowing and gruesome violence that should have rattled them. Even if they did it to survive, people can still have guilt and feelings and remorse, and it would have been interesting to explore those emotions deeper.
Furthermore, I felt as though this book could have had more elements of feminism and anarchy, because it relied heavily on many dystopian and “tox” tropes. Which is not neccessarily bad, it just felt as though they could have had some commentary. This could have had to do with the fact that the plot was so simple. There was no antagonist, and no real sense of urgency. It didn’t seem as though this Tox was really threatening them, because they could just “keep doing what they needed to survive”, and not actually try and change their situation in any drastic way. Plus, can we collectively agree that the bear at the end was incredibly useless?
The writing of this book was pretty simplistic. It had some weird mechanical errors, as well as some weird sentence structures and flows, which hopefully will improve with more editing, or in Power’s future novels. Ultimately, this book is pretty forgettable. Honestly, I’ve already forgotten much of what happened and I finished it 12 hours ago. Maybe I’m too pretentious for this book, or being too hard on it. I’m open to having my mind changed and giving Powers a second try in the future.
Firstly, I want to say that as a debut novel, this is just fine. With more experience and practice, Powers can really fine tune things like exposition, pacing, and character development, as well as develop a more unique tone of writing. Set at an all girls boarding school on an island off the coast of wild Maine, Wilder Girls has the perfect setting for a creepy book. In a book with a ‘tox’ such as this one, the setting has the potential to come to life and become a character of its own, developing and influencing the plot as much as any of its inhabitants. Unfortunately, I don’t feel as though that is the case. There was hardly any exposition to orient the reader. Opting to drop the reader into the middle of the Tox in order to start off with a lot of momentum, Powers never goes back to fill in the gaps, leaving the reader to infer and guess as to the mechanics of the boarding school and the island on which it resides. While I’m not advocating for the reader to be spoonfed every last detail, it would have been beneficial to learn some basic details about things such as, you know, the Tox that is infecting and killing all the students and staff. Instead, the reader was just fed the same information about the abnormalities select girls received, and the fact that the oldest and youngest died off first, which… of course. That’s how illnesses work. Nevertheless, there were some glaring logistical issues that could have been solved with more exposition and background on the Tox and the boarding school.
Secondly, the characters in this novel were unlikeable, and not in a way in which they are supposed to have some literary merit that redeems them. It was a struggle to get myself to care about any of these girls. The relationships amongst Hetty, Byatt, and Reese, the three girls who are supposed to be friends as well as saving the day until Byatt goes missing, seemed forced. I would not have believed that these girls were friends had I not been explicitly told. While I appreciate the LGBT+ rep in this novel, I wish that it would have been more organic. There was no spark or hint of romance before Hetty and Reese kissed, and I was honestly thrown off when it occurred, not for want of seeing more girl/girl romance in books, but for how jarring it was to see two people with no connection suddenly in love. All of these characters had very similar voices, and it felt as though there was no emotional or intellectual growth for them throughout the novel. There was no change of mindset, even after harrowing and gruesome violence that should have rattled them. Even if they did it to survive, people can still have guilt and feelings and remorse, and it would have been interesting to explore those emotions deeper.
Furthermore, I felt as though this book could have had more elements of feminism and anarchy, because it relied heavily on many dystopian and “tox” tropes. Which is not neccessarily bad, it just felt as though they could have had some commentary. This could have had to do with the fact that the plot was so simple. There was no antagonist, and no real sense of urgency. It didn’t seem as though this Tox was really threatening them, because they could just “keep doing what they needed to survive”, and not actually try and change their situation in any drastic way. Plus, can we collectively agree that the bear at the end was incredibly useless?
The writing of this book was pretty simplistic. It had some weird mechanical errors, as well as some weird sentence structures and flows, which hopefully will improve with more editing, or in Power’s future novels. Ultimately, this book is pretty forgettable. Honestly, I’ve already forgotten much of what happened and I finished it 12 hours ago. Maybe I’m too pretentious for this book, or being too hard on it. I’m open to having my mind changed and giving Powers a second try in the future.