I was highly anticipating Wilder Girls and although I enjoyed the beginning, I did not enjoy the end. Still looking forward to more pieces by this author though!

I went into this book thinking that I would love it as the concept truly intrigued me and I did end up enjoying the idea of the book but not the book itself. It was intriguing to read a female twist on the classic Lord of the Flies however the aspect that makes Lord of the Flies what it is was missing in this book, character development. We are given girls who have devolved into animals in someway but this book lacks the complexity that makes you root for the girls in spite of this. I feel as though the characters could easily be interchanged with one another as they were given one key characteristic and that was the only distinction between them. When reading, I fall in love with characters and that is what sticks out to me but almost every single character in this book was two dimensional. I could not see them outside of their one defining characteristic. Additionally, the book moved very slowly at some points but very rapidly at others and I found it hard to stay interested in the plot because of this.

Not a fan, this book dragged for me a lot and I had trouble connecting to the characters or what they were going through. That being said Rory Power has some beautiful and descriptive writing and I'm still interested in checking out future books based on that alone. The ending felt like a rushed cop out, and the romance angle felt forced.

Read to 45% before skipping to 80% and reading the rest. I liked Hetty and Byatt and Reese well enough. Plot wise, it was boring and intriguing at the same time. The writing was confusing to read at times as well. Oh well.

Well damn.
This book was not really one I planned to read, but all the hype got to me and I gave in to book peer pressure. Yeah, I'm kind of glad I did as I was instantly hooked. This book has so many elements that I like. And I am seriously liking the fact that the readers really have no clue what the hell is going on-what is the Tox? How did the Tox arrive? Why is it only on their island? So yeah, loved it. And with each discovery brings new questions which brings new discoveries, etc etc until the end.

I liked the end, even though it did not end the way I expected/wanted, but that's okay.

Strong start, but ultimately didn't feel satisfying. But I would still check out what the author puts out next.

This is such a good book. I wasn't sure if I would like but I really did. You are thrown into the world immediately which is confusing at first but that works because even the characters are confused. The POV switch was strange at first but I am glad it was there. The book is dark and graphic but that is the world now for them.

Hello Again,

Oh boy! So I finished Wilder Girls super recently (like a day or so ago) and I wanted to write this while things were fresh in my mind. I was so in love with this book's cover and I wanted this book so badly and I ended up purchasing it pretty much right away however I kind of wish I had waited a little bit and asked some of my reading group friends what their thoughts were. So without further ado let's talk about Wilder Girls!

SPOILERS AHEAD

This book centers around an island and a group of girls who once attended the school on the island. See not that long ago the island was taken over by a Tox. It infected the girls, the teachers, the staff, the animals, the plants, everything on the island. The CDC sent word that the girls should stay in the containment and no one should leave the school area unless they were part of the group of girls getting the packages that were being delivered from the CDC. If this rule was followed the CDC and the government would continue to deliver the food and other items the girls needed to survive and they would work on a cure.

However, things change rapidly as our group of three ladies (Hetty, Byatt, and Reese) find themselves in some trouble on the island. First, Hetty is put on the work detail group that gets to go retrieve the package from the CDC with two other girls. Reese wanted this spot more than anything as she has lived on this island her whole life and her home and father are out there somewhere. When the tox started her father left the school grounds and went back to the house and Reese has not seen him since and she is desperate to see him and see if he is okay. After this things quickly spiral as Hetty learns and sees things she maybe shouldn't when she is out on the pickup crew. From there Byatt has a spell and gets sicker and is taken by one of the remaining professors (usually girls who are getting sicker are taken upstairs to the infirmary) however, Reese and Hetty discover that Byatt is not in the infirmary and they overhear the teacher talking to someone! From here our three girls go on the fight for survival, for answers, and for a cure.

I do not want to spoil too much for the plot and the ending however, I will say I was really not happy with how things ended. We had a lot of rising action towards the end and I thought it was going to build to some big dramatic ending but it felt like it just kind of let me down. I know what the Tox is, but I do not know what happens to our group of ladies, and there are so many questions surrounding Byatt when things end. Overall, I thought the plot and concept of this story was an interesting idea and that combined with the cover is what made me want to pick up this book, however, the ending fell a bit flat for me. I wanted so much more and I truly feel like it could have been so much more. Additionally, after talking with my spouse a bit about this book (I tend to share what I am reading with him) he pointed out to me that a lot of the things in here are similar to one of the Residental Evil games so I will definitely be trying that out soon! I am giving this book three stars on Goodreads.


***In addition to buying this book I was given a copy on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was hyped. Like, next level hype. So I was happy to get an ARC. Then I forgot to read said ARC in a timely fashion. Perhaps this was my subconscious trying to keep me from being underwhelmed and disappointed.

Because I am both underwhelmed and disappointed.

I read it fast because I wasn't connected to the characters. They weren't... deep and complicated enough. And then there was a random love triangle... amongst a trio of a girls who had mutations while living on a doomed island? It was just too much.

I read it fast because I wasn't connected to the plot. I'm not entirely sure what the plot was. Except mutations. And girls being generally awful to each other. A better plot would have been the inner workings of an ordinary all-girls boarding school.

The thing just before the end was way too close to what the Nazis did... just insanely inappropriate.

And the end was abrupt and unsatisfying and vaguely... vague.

But two stars because I finished it? Yep.

(I received a copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest and original review. All thoughts are my own.)

I really enjoyed the first half of this book, and I loved the almost all of the last half, but sadly the quick ending just really left a bad taste in my mouth. I would love this to be a first book in a series, and I would love to read more, but as a standalone it just didn't feel very great to finish.

I was so excited for this book, the premise sounded interesting with a virus and infected girls quarantined in boarding school and the cover is gorgeous enough to make me want to read without even knowing what the book was about.

The beginning of the book was fantastic and scary and I was so there for it. But then it felt like the plot spiraled out of control and I was not invested in it even a little. What first appeared as a horror dystopian became a sort of survival friendship love story that I didn't care about. The lack of answers about EVERYTHING sucked and I found our three "heroines" to be very selfish and completely self involved, unconcerned that their actions potentially could kill others. Also, there was not a whole lot of character development or relationship development and everything felt flat.


**Mild spoiler **
If the tox is estrogen sensitive, why are all the animals crazy since half the animal population would have estrogen??? I just need more answers. After discussing the book with my book club someone pointed out that the reason for the tox was given in a single random paragraph that I guess I overlooked (and so did so many others so I am not alone in my confusion) but it was never given any real importance.

Other people seem to really like this book, it just went in a different direction that what I expected and what I wanted.

If I could describe Wilder Girls in one word, it would be weird. I've noticed that there are varying opinions on this book, especially when it comes to the ending. Some loved it, others not so much. I think I fall more on the side of loving Wilder Girls. It was weird but in a positive way! I wasn't going into this with any expectations except that it was going to be a wild ride. And it really was. This book stands out among all of the other books that I've read this year and I am incredibly eager to read whatever else Rory Power writes!

Hetty, Byatt, and Reese go to extremes to figure out the strange disease that has them quarantined at their island boarding school, off the Maine coast. The girls are changing physically, in addition to the mental stress of being isolated with reduced food and supplies. The Tox has taken over the island, infecting the plants, animals, and girls living there. Friendships are forged and tested as survival becomes paramount.

I loved Lord of the Flies when I read it in college and am loving this trend in retellings with gender swaps and modern sensibilities. I first put this in my survival section, but as I read further, I think it fits better in mystery/horror.

P. 121 Byatt: Too bright and too bored and something missing, or perhaps something too much there.

I don't know what I was expecting when I started reading this book, but this wasn't it. Wilder Girls is a crazy book involving a strange disease, a quarantined boarding school, and mutated wildlife. It's also about friendship, love, and a search for answers. Wilder Girls will leave you guessing till the final page.

Eerie and horrifying and bloody. Some amazing voice and character bonds. But I still have so many questions??? The ENDING???? I need a sequel.

Wilder Girls is part survival thriller, part dystopian, and part horror. It manages to do justice to all of these genres, but it still felt unfinished to me. The book is often marketed as a feminist retelling of William Golding's classic Lord of the Flies and while it does share similar themes to that dystopian classic, Wilder Girls holds its own.

It's been a year and a half since the Raxter School for Girls was ravaged by the Tox, a mysterious sickness that crept in slowly through the woods, distorting the properties and bodies of anything in its path. The teachers' and students' bodies have been changed in vicious ways, ranging from new body parts to skin changing into scales for those who survive and those who don't suffer an excruciating death as they wilt and their bodies blackened as the Tox eats away at them. Left with the promise of a cure, the quarantined girls watch out for one another. That's precisely what Hetty is doing when her friend Byatt disappears, and together with her friend Reese, she breaks quarantine to penetrate the wild beyond the fence to find her.

Wilder Girls has a very creepy atmospheric quality to the story that hovers around our main characters rather than the traditional jump scares. For much of the story, the reader and the girls do not know much of what is happening but we are enraptured by this twisted tale by the little hints of a backstory dropped throughout the book and effective foreshadowing done by the author. The elements of body horror is quite striking throughout the novel with the graphic mentions of a stitched-up eye with something lurking underneath, a second protruding spine, animals growing three times their size. There is a connection between the Tox and the female physical development which I found to be fascinating and wanted to learn more about.

The story is divided into mainly two narratives of Hetty and Byatt and it is Hetty's fierce loyalty which drives the story. Unlike Lord of the Flies, in which their isolation catalyzes their social hierarchy and eventually makes the characters turn on one another, Wilder Girls has the complete opposite result. The girls' solidarity and their relationships help foster their survival. While there are clear differences as to who holds power, the story does not focus on the girls tearing each other down, which I really appreciated. I also appreciated that our main characters all fall in the spectrum of LGBTQ+ and their sexual identities are not a big deal. There is a hint of romance or perhaps two are that are brewing in the background, but it is not the main part of the story. Overall I really loved the themes of the story and the representation of the characters, but I wished I had gotten a few solid details of the Tox and I did not care for the open ending. I would recommend this book to readers who are looking for a unique horror book that moves beyond the scares. I am looking forward to see what the author does next.

Delacorte Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Wilder Girls. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Fenced in and locked away from the rest of the world, the young teenagers and the remainder of the staff from the Raxter School for Girls must rely on random drops of supplies from the government to survive. Physically altered by an unknown source, the struggle to make it through is complicated by flareups of the Tox and the pain that results. For Hetty and the rest of her peers, is there something at play for which they have no knowledge? Who can they trust? Are they every truly safe?

At first, Wilder Girls had a Lord of the Flies type feeling, but this changes as the book progresses. I actually liked the story more in the beginning, a classic survival of the fittest story that shows the breakdown of social norms during a disaster. The author seems to throw in plot points, in order to drive the story toward the eventual ending. I did not like the second half of the book, with one exception. The bit of realism at the conclusion did not do enough to resurrect the story for me, so I would be hesitant to recommend Wilder Girls to other readers.

This book was a wild (no pun intended) ride. Part sci-fi, part dystopian, part coming of age story. It was an interesting story with a few twists at the end. However, if you're looking for a book with a perfectly wrapped up ending - this won't be that. A great debut novel, will definitely check out further works by Rory Power.

On an island in the North Atlantic sits a private girl's school. As Rory Power's book <em>Wilder Girls</em> opens, a plague has already spread across the island (and more?) and the surviving girls and instructors have found their own way to move on with their new lives. Their independence is frail, however, as they cannot go into the woods surrounding their school because the plague, referred to as 'Tox,' is thick, making the wilderness around their school truly wild.

Three girls, Hetty, Byatt, and Reese, have become quite close friends through the shared ordeal. One day Byatt is suddenly missing and despite a strict, warden-like adult trying to care for the girls, Hetty goes in search for her friend only to make some horrific discoveries.

The book is told through two alternating viewpoints - Hetty's and Byatt's. Given that there are three friends, it makes for a highly interesting writing device making Reese's involvement <em>more</em> interesting.

Rory Power understands that 'less is more' and that often what we are <em>not</em> told is more interesting than what is directing in front of us. Here, sometimes, what we are not told over-powers the story. The biggest of these is the Tox itself. It's a dystopian novel and the story is about the girls and their survival, but knowing anything about how this all came to be makes it the intriguing story that we never get.

That the Tox plays a major role in the plot, yet we know nothing about it, makes it the frustrating story we never get.

I definitely fell into the hype surrounding this book (there's been a real marketing push for this) and I was most certainly drawn to the incredible cover, which promised a strange, dark story (which is provided).

I think that there is a strong YA readership that will devour this book. As a YA book this follows all the plot requirements (a youth, typically a girl, on her own, not understood by the adults in her life, facing odds that are depressing) but with some twists that make it stand out among other books. But for me, the lack of information made it more frustrating than appealing.

Looking for a good book? <em>Wilder Girls</em> by Rory Power is a dystopian YA book with plenty of intrigue but leaves many holes in the story.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Knowing that they are special, the Wilder Girls, who were once a young group of girls sent to a boarding school on an island, learn to survive despite the advent of mystery physical deformities. Provided they live through the metamorphosis. But as they wait each week for the provisions provided by the government, a group of three girls uncover secrets that were to change the course of their lives. Rory Power’s debut novel shows a societal commentary of the horrors of how little a government can care for its people. This novel is intermixed with fantasy, love, and an overall horror that shacks the reader into realizations they may never want to have had.