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A review by writingcaia
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
This book gives me hope for authors writing weird new stories which this one is.
On an island there’s Raxter, a girls boarding school, and there’s also the Tox, a disease culling lives or changing the surviving few strange with mutations, the same happening with the fauna and flora of the island for the last eighteen months they think. In Raxter there’re three friends who along with the others surviving girls and female teachers are quarantined and confined to the school grounds unable to explore the rest of the island, only the boat crew allowed to go out to pick up the supplies sent by the navy base close by.
An opening to the boat crew opens early on in the story and one of the friends, Reese, really wants to get picked out, since she is a native of the island and knows the place, and so is her father who unfortunately disappeared soon after the Tox hit and who she wants to see if he’s still out there, but luck has it it will be one of her friends that gets the chance, Hetty, the one eyed girl, the lead of this tale. However, what she’ll find out there will be more puzzling and disheartening than she could ever have guessed.
Still, they keep on hoping and waiting for a cure, Hetty and Byatt, her beautiful mysterious sister from another mister bff, and even the resigned tough Reese, who stands always slightly apart from the duo. Until the day Byatt goes missing after the usually final flare of the disease comes to her body. Desperate Hetty will do anything to have her friend back and she is able to convince Reese too, easier than she had thought. After all are they friends too, right?
This is a book about fighting to survive, fighting to fit in, fighting to be, but will they make it? Can they overcome their disease, can they survive it, can they ever understand what is happening to them?
This is not an easy story, but I truly liked the diverse cast, albeit 99% female (girl power) and their very different personalities and struggles, and as we follow the three friends we find that not everything is as it seems and that they’re not black or white. Also, the final explanation for it all is so good, but this is not your typical book as I’ve said before, it is YA but really gory and gritty, with a weird plot and setting.
I liked it but it was also maybe a bit too weird for me, and there were things I’d have like to have been dug deeper, still kudos for the originality of plot and the immersive and emotional writing.
On an island there’s Raxter, a girls boarding school, and there’s also the Tox, a disease culling lives or changing the surviving few strange with mutations, the same happening with the fauna and flora of the island for the last eighteen months they think. In Raxter there’re three friends who along with the others surviving girls and female teachers are quarantined and confined to the school grounds unable to explore the rest of the island, only the boat crew allowed to go out to pick up the supplies sent by the navy base close by.
An opening to the boat crew opens early on in the story and one of the friends, Reese, really wants to get picked out, since she is a native of the island and knows the place, and so is her father who unfortunately disappeared soon after the Tox hit and who she wants to see if he’s still out there, but luck has it it will be one of her friends that gets the chance, Hetty, the one eyed girl, the lead of this tale. However, what she’ll find out there will be more puzzling and disheartening than she could ever have guessed.
Still, they keep on hoping and waiting for a cure, Hetty and Byatt, her beautiful mysterious sister from another mister bff, and even the resigned tough Reese, who stands always slightly apart from the duo. Until the day Byatt goes missing after the usually final flare of the disease comes to her body. Desperate Hetty will do anything to have her friend back and she is able to convince Reese too, easier than she had thought. After all are they friends too, right?
This is a book about fighting to survive, fighting to fit in, fighting to be, but will they make it? Can they overcome their disease, can they survive it, can they ever understand what is happening to them?
This is not an easy story, but I truly liked the diverse cast, albeit 99% female (girl power) and their very different personalities and struggles, and as we follow the three friends we find that not everything is as it seems and that they’re not black or white. Also, the final explanation for it all is so good, but this is not your typical book as I’ve said before, it is YA but really gory and gritty, with a weird plot and setting.
I liked it but it was also maybe a bit too weird for me, and there were things I’d have like to have been dug deeper, still kudos for the originality of plot and the immersive and emotional writing.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Gore, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Murder
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Minor: Gun violence, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts
Starvation, Stitching, Near death experience