I did not like this book at all. It was not even worth reading. I couldn't seem to bring myself to enjoy it. the characters were too flat.

In a new, horrifyingly unsettling YA novel by debut author Rory Power, the hit TV show Lost meets the classic novel The Lord of the Flies; that is, if The Lord of the Flies was set on an island inhabited only by girls and plagued by a sweeping infection that is literally painting everything black.

The Raxter School for Girls, located on an island off the coast of Maine, was hit with what is called the "Tox" eighteen months ago. The Tox has infected the girls of Raxter School, causing them to develop strange mutations, including scaly skin, sealed off eyeballs, and extra body parts that are normally singular (two hearts or spines, anyone?) For those who haven't died yet, it is just a game of survival. Holed up in their school, they are cut off from the rest of the world, 1) because the Tox has also infected the animals of the island, turning them into something ferocious and fierce, and 2) because the outside world does not want to risk infection themselves. Supplies are periodically dropped off to the girls, but there never seems to be enough of anything to go around, especially food. Yes, not only are the Raxter girls infected, they are also starving.

Hetty, Byatt, and Reese, three Raxter School girls, share a room and never leave each others' side. That is, until the day that the Tox causes a severe reaction in Byatt, making her deathly ill. When Baxter is quarantined away from the rest of the girls, Hetty and Reese are determined to find her ... but at what cost? Pretty soon the already dangerous and tense atmosphere of Raxter Island is made even more explosive as the girls uncover secrets that no one was ever meant to discover.

Wilder Girls has all the makings of a suspenseful, compulsive read, set on an island being overtaken by a mysterious force, and inhabited by a group of teenage girls with little to no adult supervision. The Tox is terrifying, the tension is thick, and the atmosphere is eerie. Wilder Girls also plays on the theme of an isolated community void of men. The Raxter girls are no damsels in distress. These girls scavenge, kill, and plot to their advantage - there's no waiting for a prince in shining armor to show up on this island.

However, while this novel has a lot of great story elements throughout, there is little payoff at the end. Readers who are expecting to learn all about the origins of the Tox, how the girls became infected, and why the Tox manifests itself so differently in each girl, should be warned that little to nothing is explained by the end of the story. Perhaps this means that a sequel is anticipated? However, with no promise of a series, the ending was quite disappointing and abrupt to me, hence my three star rating.

3.5. The concept was really intriguing and this book started out strong. The dynamic between the survivors was great, the connection between the individual girls and the way their body horror manifested was thought-provoking, and I was really drawn into the unsettling nature of the story. But then it began to focus more on describing the eerie atmosphere and we did not really get any closure/specificity on anything--the disease, the army, the oddness of the island, et cetera. More ambiguous than I would've liked.

I liked this book. Were my expectations overwhelmingly high? Yes. But I enjoyed the characters and the atmosphere may have been my favorite part of the story. The ending did kind of... affect my rating, but overall this was a nice, creepy read.

The cover, the story, the characters and the ending.....AMAZING! Do not hesitate to get this book! Thank you Netgalley for a free ARC IN exchange for an honest review!

This book had the potential to be so much more. The storyline was great, and the writing style was really interesting and engaging. There could have been 100 more pages to better flesh out the backstory and give it a better ending but all in all it was a good book.

A lot of people have been calling Wilder Girls a female version of Lord of the Flies; I'd say it's much more of a YA take on Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, since both involve an all-female cast, weird fiction focused on a very specific environment, and an overlying sense of unease and strangeness. Unlike Vandermeer's creation of humid Florida otherness, Wilder Girls is set on an isolated island off the coast of Maine, home to an all-girls boarding school that has been completely cut off from the mainland for a year and a half after the outbreak of a mysterious disease referred to as the Tox. The Tox, along with causing intermittent episodes of crippling pain and affliction, warps the bodies of the girls to suit its opaque purposes: one character's hair glows, and the cover illustration shows a metaphorical look at the potential for beauty in these mutations, but the reality for the rest of the girls is much more sinister: our main character Hetty's eye has been sealed shut, her best friend Byatt has grown a second, alien spine, and our hair-glowing friend Rae can't use one of her hands.

The disease and quarantine, however, are affecting more than just the girls' bodies. The majority of their teachers are dead, and no other adults are left alive on the island; the Navy sends food intermittently, but it's never enough; and the girls are forced to be constantly vigilant against the threat of attack from Tox-warped wild animals from the surrounding forest. Contact with the outside world is almost non-existent, but the girls still left alive have become survivors, adapting to an unthinkable new reality with pragmatism and strict adherence to the new rules of their lives. Until a few crucial things change: Hetty acquires new information that makes her question what's really happening on the island, and her best friend, seemingly irrepressible, blue-blooded, capricious Byatt, goes missing.

I love weird fiction (think Vandermeer or Samanta Schweblin) and am delighted to find the genre finding a foothold in YA. Powers creates an intensely atmospheric setting in Raxter Island that feels like a character itself, and the mysterious illness plaguing the island's inhabitants is a constantly creeping antagonist, at times forced to the background and at other times reasserting its presence forcefully, throughout the other horrors that the characters encounter. Hetty is a tough, survival-focused main character, and I loved her loyalty to her friends, her determination, and her slowly developing romance with Rae. I also loved complex, morally grey Byatt, who I could easily read another entire book about.

Wilder Girls is fascinating and immersive, and I didn't see a lot of the plot twists coming, but the pacing is a bit irregular and unconventional, which may bother some readers, although it wasn't an issue for me personally. And I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but I do need to address the ending. I really don't mind an open-ended or thought-provoking ending as long as it's done well--Kelly Link is one of my favorite authors, for example, and all of her stories both end and begin ambiguously. But I didn't feel that this was the case in Wilder Girls, and rather than feeling ambiguous, the ending struck me as unfinished, and unfortunately didn't work for me, which is why I'm giving this 4 stars rather than 5.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an eARC of Wilder Girls in exchange for an honest review.

didn't love this and I am SO SAD about it. I did enjoy the first half of the book, but the ending was such a let down that it honestly tainted any positive feelings I had for whatever came before it. The biggest womp.

I truly wanted to love this book. I had heard only great things about it. I love the cover. I loved the synopsis for the book, but I hate to say that this one just wasn't for me. I am honored for the opportunity to review it but I just didn't care for this book. I feel like everything was rushed. The characters had none to little development. None of the characters were likable or even genuine. I felt like details should have been added when referring to the island and the concept of the creatures. It just felt like a void. I finished this book within a day, it was a quick read, but it just felt like a book full of fluff. After I closed it, I tried to think about what I had gained from reading it, and the answer was nothing. It was like a lot of stuff was said, and nothing done.

Wilder Girls has been in my radar since I saw this hauled in Kayla’s channel, @booksandlala, not only because of the exquisitely designed cover but primarily due to the sapphic romance/horror tale it was being branded as. Since one of my reading goals this year is to broaden my reading reach, I figured this will be a perfect candidate to somehow carry out the task. If you know me, you will for sure say that I have wallowed deeply into LGBTQIAplus novels but this surely horror is not something I pick up on my own. It was also a pleasure to read this book with two of my fave book reviewers – Jon from @wanderwithjon and Jenny from @levicorpvs.

The story is set in a girls’ school on Raxter Island off the coast of Maine commencing about two years after the Tox, an unusual disease that took the island leaving the students and school personnel in quarantine. We dive in with the aftermath of said protocol and the continuing, aggravating conditions as the hopes for a cure dwindles. We follow mainly Hetty, Byatt, and Reese as they struggle to survive flare-ups and thinning supplies until one of them goes missing. Hetty will stop at nothing to save her friend and in her wake she tips the balance as the truth strips their safe haven layer by layer leaving every already battered soul fraying further at the edges.

Rory Power was successful in creating a world coated in isolation, of being trapped in a place that is growing and moving so fast it outruns you. It’s a scare that does not take you from behind. It’s a horror that announces itself, slowly pinning your limbs, muffling and heightening your senses at the same time. You know it’s there, something that crawls under your feet and tickles your skin. I particularly loved how she does not shy away from gore and blood in how the Tox materializes in the girls and in the events that followed to fish for survival.

The story is slow-burn and most readers may not like that but it is something that grew on me. I appreciate the characterization of the three main girls. Hetty is driven. Byatt is the damsel that has secrets. Reese is the stoic one. The style reminded me a little bit of Josh Malerman with Patrick Ness thrown in the mix. The cryptic vibe, despite the pacing, actually hooked me.

Although this narrative has its highs, I can’t close the book without having something more to desire. It could be my fault entirely but I dipped my head knowing that there is a female-female romance centered in this. What I got were slivers of it, a peek on something which could have been great. The novel was also told in the POVs of both Hetty and Byatt. Hetty’s focuses on providing the reader of the information that is already known and initiating the action needed. I thought it achieved those things for the most part. Byatt’s, on the other hand, was sort of anti-climactic. I kind of wished that Power used it to be more exploratory. It teased that but ended only telling the same things already proven.

The scientific evidence of its origin and how it manifested actually lowered my rating. It took away from the creeps initially established. There were inconsistencies in the symptoms and cause that although I am willing to suspend reality for this, I would have preferred it was left mysterious.

For a debut novel, Wilder Girls definitely has its dark charm. It’s a solid novel to begin with only that I wanted my consumption wilder. I will definitely look out for the future stuff Power has to offer.

I've been looking forward to this book all year. I love boarding school books, I love horror, and I love apocalyptic-type books. (Okay, this isn't the end of the world yet, but it's certainly a concern with a quarantined disease.)

So.... I really want to say I loved this book. But sadly, I did not. It's not that I didn't see potential, because it was clearly there, but somewhere along the way the story got lost.

Wilder Girls starts out strong. The setting is captivating. This island in New England that grew flowers that bloomed in winter?? And was wild beyond imagination?? Yes, I was all IN for that. Then the story and the bonds between the girls kicked in and I was HOOKED... for a while.

I really liked the initial character-feel of this book. The relationship between the girls was odd and interesting. I liked learning about the island and their connection to it. I liked seeing flashbacks about their previous lives and how the 3 main girls became close.

What I didn't like was when the book devolved into more of an atmospheric book. The story and the character focus fell away and it was all gore and setting. I wanted to know WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON. This disease was something so strange that it begged explanation. Scientific explanation. I need it. I need you to tell me how it works. Where it came from. Why it's not anywhere else. I need to know.

I didn't get to know.

The ending of this book was SO disappointing. It's been a while since I've read a complete non-ending book. They piss me off every single time. I don't need everything tied up in a neat bow. I don't need to know the answers to all my questions. I actually kind of like open endings... but I need there to be some type of ending. This one just felt like the author got bored and said THE END.

OVERALL: I hate to say this, but I just did not love this book in the end. It started out strong, but it got completely lost along the way. Open endings I'm good with, non-endings enrage me. This was the latter. I think this story had potential to blow me away, but it needed like 50 more pages with SCIENCE.

Did somebody say feminist horror cause there goes my money outta the window as I drool all over this cover.
Also just in: this book is hella gay.

Wilder Girls was one of my most anticipated books of 2019. The premise and cover gave me life and I was ready to experience all the horror and gore that they promised. I got what I wanted. So be warned. This book is violent and gory. Don't take this lightly. It's a ruthless story about an all-girls boarding school set on an island that has been overtaken by a plague called the tox. The island and all of its inhabitants, including the wildlife, have been transformed and countless girls have died at its hands. The ones that survived are left with gruesome (but kind of cool) deformities. A second spine. A scaled hand. Two hearts. Expect lots of death, blood, intestines, and violence. Body horror realness.

The characters are my wildest dreams come true. Unapologetic, unlikeable, determined, passionate, independent, queer, young women with complex characters and emotions. No need to say more. The writing was wild, too. I was immediately drawn into the story because it's often poetic, and just as untamed as the world it creates. There was one thing that I wasn't satisfied with though: the ending. [I'm a sucker for open endings that leave you on the brink of an emotional breakdown. But I'm not sure what to make with this one. It leaves too many questions unanswered. It feels like the last one or two chapters were written already but scrapped just before the book went into printing. Now the ending kind of sits there and I don't know what to do with it. (hide spoiler)]

The reason I'm only giving four stars is that I felt somewhat detached from the book - for which I can only blame myself. It was the busiest time of the year, with deadlines and exams coming up, so it took my two weeks to finish the book. My reading experience suffered from it. As soon as I have my tbr a little more under control I'll return to Wilder Girls and give it another go. But overall, this book ticked all the boxes.

This book was a page turning mystery that you definitely don’t want to put down! Hetty the main character was such a strong person throughout the entire book. Even though she went through all the trials Hetty did while she was still encouraging others and going above and beyond for her other friends. I could see myself in Hetty a lot and it was a book I didn’t want to put down! Honestly it’s the first book I’ve read physically in a long time and I just couldn’t get over the cliffhanger at the end!

I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for my advanced copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Wilder Girls is deliciously strange and unusual. It can't be molded into one genre with it's horror, sci-fi, and magical realism inspired plotline. The less you know about the story, the more you get sucked in. Where does it lead and what does it mean? You have to find out for yourself!

I am giving this novel a 3.5 star rating because I wanted the author to take the strangeness and madness over the top. I can't even exactly pinpoint where but I just know I wanted more. More weirdness. More suspense. More confusion. I enjoyed how icky I felt while reading the book but there were too many parts where the story was too slow to maintain that feeling.

However, I think this would be an excellent book club read. The ending was vague enough (though to me that felt a bit like a letdown) that it will spark many interpretations. Moreover, the subtle feminism (or maybe not so subtle) with almost all characters being female for example adds to the complexness of this book. The main characters are flawed and beautiful despite or probably because of their disfigured appearances. The characters have no pretense. What you see is what you get. The meaning behind the plot though is open to your imagination making this book also one to re-read.

This premise is really intriguing — a queer/feminist Lord of the Flies? Sounds awesome! But the execution left much to be desired, imo. The characters were bland and the pacing was torture. I couldn’t distinguish any of these girls by name even if I had a gun to my head. The way the plot unfolded also felt really amateurish. Almost all of revelations near the end were frustratingly easy; they didn’t feel earned and they weren’t explained thoroughly to have any sort of meaning to the reader. Wilder Girls has much needed queer rep in dystopian fiction and a cool concept, but it suffers from being a mediocre debut. The prose and dialogue are satisfactory, but that beautiful cover isn’t enough to justify the mess that is everything else. Do yourself a favor and go read Lord of the Flies itself, or Quarantine by Lex Thomas if you want a more modern version. 2.4/5 stars

I read WILDER GIRLS because it was a Kelly's Pick on bookish.com. As soon as I started reading WILDER GIRLS by Rory Power, I was sucked in by the mystery surrounding Raxter Island and the Tox, and the lengths to which the young women of Raxter will go to survive, save one another, and uncover the truth of what’s happening to them.. The imagery is simultaneously gorgeous and grotesque. It’s not a book for the faint of heart, but I highly recommend it for those who love the darkest sides of fairy tales and don’t mind a little gore. I can’t wait to read more from Rory Power!

Unpopular opinion: I really enjoyed this book.
….until the last two – three chapters.

What I liked:

So I had heard pretty meh reviews about this book. It was good until about halfway in, or the ending was bad, or whatever. I still went in with a pretty open mind, and I thoroughly enjoyed the book until the end.

It’s a medical mystery, which I love. There’s something making the Raxter island sick, and no one can figure out what it is. There’s a doomed boarding school on the island. They’ve been cut off for a year and a half. The Navy sends supplies periodically. The girls learn to survive. I absolutely loved that aspect.

The first chapter grabbed my attention and I did not want to put this book down. I was mad when I had to work and couldn’t read. I was right there along side the girls trying to figure out what was making the whole island sick. It was a fast paced story and I read it in about 4.5 hours total.

On another note, I think this would make a super cool movie if they revised the ending!

What I didn't like:

The chapters were long. I like to stop reading at the end of the chapter, so sometimes I was struggling to stay awake and find an ending point. That’s just a personal preference.

They described wounds the girls got.. and it was gross. Even for me as a nurse.

There was, what felt like to me, a weird random romance that didn’t really make sense.

Some of the characters seemed super petty, but they are also teenage girls so i guess that’s to be expected? It was just a turn off for me.

And then the ending. It just seemed like there was no resolution. You figure out what was making everyone sick, but you never saw the aftermath. I want to know what happened after they found out! And I want to know other things which I won’t say here because ~spoilers~. It just left me wanting.

Would I recommend?

Ugh, what a tough question. I guess I would, but I would tell them that the ending was not what you want. Like, it was a super good book up until the last few chapters. The last few chapters is why I gave a 3.5 star rating instead of four. Just sooo disappointing.

The top 3 reasons you need WILDER GIRLS by Rory Power on your shelf:

1.) The characters: If your favorite characters are usually written by Courtney Summers, then you need to read Rory Power's debut immediately. They have the same gritty tones, complex interior lives, and rough edges. For Hetty and the others, it's not a matter of being likable or unlikable; it's a matter of existing on a decaying island where survival and love are both bloody and edged in steel.

2.) The body horror: While I love horror, I never truly understood body horror until I read WILDER GIRLS. The infection changes people's bodies in unique ways, there are several scenes of physical conflict, and scenes of scientific experimentation. For some people, this will be a deal-breaker, so be prepared going in.

3.) The edge-of-your-seat tone: Power captures one of the elements that make people love survivalist stories: the tense, edge of your seat tone. The pages are filled with tension, and you get the feeling that it could snap at any moment (and it's a big hit when it does). WILDER GIRLS is made to be devoured, and I couldn't put it down once I started it.

Overall, WILDER GIRLS cements itself as a unique, edgy, and horrific (in the best way) novel that you won't soon forget.

I’ve been wanting and praying and hoping to read this book for months on end and now I read and… wow was it a ride. In the good sense. In the sense of this book got under my skin, made me want to jump out of it and flee this earth altogether to go live in some uninhabited planet by myself because everything happening was Too Much. I’m realizing now that this intro doesn’t make any sense, so let me backtrack and write down my thoughts in a semi-structured manner.

The writing in Wilder Girls is beautiful in the most haunting of ways, it’s the kind that gets your heart racing because of how it drives the point home and gets you feeling every emotion the characters feel. The biggest chunk of it is written from Hetty’s point of view, but we also get a few chapters from Byatt’s. At first glance, both characters’ voices seem very similar but two sentences in, it was clear to me that I was not reading from the same character’s perspective, there was a slight shit in voice and sentence composition that was masterful and all that was needed to make for two fully fleshed out characters. Additionally, there was a shift in sentence structure to fit the headspace/conditions the girls were in and that was literal genius? Why have I never seen that before? It enhanced my reading experience tenfolds.

Ths is the kind of horror book I like reading, not the kind that likes to take you by surprise (because that never works on me). But the kind that has writing that makes you feel uneasy, that has you doubting everything and everyone around it, the kind that makes you shift in your seat. It’s very graphic (seriously, the description of gore is…a lot) and has a very claustrophobic feel to it because these girls are contained on an island with no way out, no way of communicating with the outside world, very limited supplies (including food), only themselves as company and a disease no one knows anything about that’s taking them out one at a time.

This book has one of my favourite things to read about int the world: Complicated female relationships (both platonic and not) centering messy girls. Especially if queer. Being in such “closed” quarters doesn’t make for the best basis for healthy relationships, nor healthy mental health so the characters have this wilderness to them that’s very…primal and disturbing at times but I feel like I loved them all the more for it. The sense of right and wrong is a bit blurred, the limits and boudaries of what’s acceptable and “moral” are as well and all rules are bended and broken when all these girls are trying to do is survive.

Wilder Girls follows a glorious trio of girls who are Hetty, Byatt and Reese. Hetty is the main MC (and the girl on the cover), she has an eye closed shut by the Tox and a lot of soft feelings for both Byatt and Reese, for one of which they are…very not platonic. Although not my favourite character (that would be Reese), I loved reading from her point of view because of how much she feels and how much she lets herself feel. It was refreshing in the best ways, especially with their circumstances, to which the logical response for most would be to shut down all emotions. She’s caring, protective of her friends and the kind of person you want in your corner because once you have her love and affection, she’d do anything for you. And I mean anything.

Then we have Byatt whom…I haven’t figured out much about to be honest, besides the fact that she has two spines stacked on top of each other of course. And I don’t think it’s a mistake on the author’s part or lack of character craft but it just made perfect sense in the context of the book. Let’s just say that we little we do see of her isn’t in the ideal circumstances fo rher to let her personality shine through. What I did grasp about her though, I loved. She’s smart, resourceful and hell bent on survival and those are really important characteristics when a mysterious disease is killing you slowly if you ask me.

Then we have Reese of the clawed hand, my favourite grumpy bean in this book. Although calling her a bean is a bit misleading, but I love her and hence call her a bean. Reese is grumpy and rough around the edges, rarely smiles but when she does she lights up your (or Hetty’s) whole world. She feels a lot too but she’s on the other end of the spectrum from Hetty in a way that she represses it, doesn’t show it and seems coldhearted and emotionless when a lot of the time she’s either having an internal gay crisis or falling apart at the seems. And. Listen. I want to be her big sister and protect her, that’s how much I love her. Her relationship with Hetty pulled at my heart strings and used it as a punching ball, they care so much about each other but there’s also so much that happens to them and between them that makes *them* complicated and just!!! *cries* I loved them together so much and just wanted them to be happy forever.

The only slight criticism that I have for completely a selfish reason is that I wanted more closure. I understand and appreciate the way this book ended from a craft and realism point of you, but the reader in me who got invested in the characters is sad. The way this ended felt like it was opening possibilities for a sequel, and a great one with more creepy and possibly sciency shenanigans. But alas, this is a standalone and this is one of those rare cases where I do want a sequel.

There was also an amazing commentary on a very timely issue which was done so subtly it took me by surprise when it was revealed but it also all made sense and felt like a fool for not realizing beforehand. I’m keeping things vague because I want you all to have the full experience but just know that it was amazing and terrifiying and made me want to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere forever.

Feminist? Check. Horror? Check. Sapphic horror is the genre I never knew I needed. Wilder Girls is the weirdest combination of everything that I love. It's almost a feminist Lord of the Flies combined with boarding school antics, sick children, and a mysterious hands off government.