I love a locked room thriller and really enjoyed Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins. This is my first read by her and her writing kept me interested right from the beginning.

The story is about Lux - her life, her boyfriend Nico and the people they meet when they bring two paying guests on their sailboat to an island with a mysterious and sinister history called Meroe Island.

There are two timeliness which gives us some backstories and without giving anything away, the book includes a twisted whodunnit that even if you figure it out before the end - it’s a fun read!

I totally recommend this if you just want to escape into a thriller with fun twists and turns!

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the earc in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book published January 4.

Omg I flew through the Wife Upstairs and this new installment from Hawkins was also a completely wild ride. Lux went from being meek in the beginning to a totally new character by the end of the book. I was thrown with the twists and wasn't really able to figure out anything ahead of time which is really great when reading thrillers. I thought the island setting was perfectly creepy while also inviting and relaxing and this book had me on my toes. I liked the cast of characters and that the book switched from before the island to present events. It was an interesting way to intertwine the characters and everything that was happening. Overall, this was tense, dark and creepy while also being super fast paced and enjoyable.

Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins
Rachel Hawkins has penned a slow burn thriller that has an edge of doubt in each chapter and abundance of deep characters in Reckless Girls.


Reckless Girls is about Lux. She is a couple years passed of going through her late mother’s untimely death due to cancer. Lux was left alone (absentee father), without direction. She dropped out of college because coping with life after her mom was too difficult. So without a sense of direction and just surviving when Nico walks in her restaurant.

After some flirting back and forth between all his visits, Lux and Nico get together. Nico convinces Lux to set off with him on his boat to explore the world and survive on their own. She has an innate need to discover the unknown, a very strong symbolism to where she is inter-personally.

After finding out the boat needs repair in which they cannot afford, they “station” in Hawaii. Where Nico gets the biggest job opportunity that could fix their boat and set them up financially for lots of traveling. The job is to take two rich girls off to a remote island in his boat. Only the two customers, Amma and Brittany, want Lux to come along too.

The plan is to set sail across the turquoise waters and anchor on the eerie, Meroe Island. The island is known for it’s dark past including inhabitants going scurvy. Intrigue and a juxtaposition of hesitation spark in Lux, but after all, she did want to explore the world, didn’t she?


Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins is a nautical thriller masterpiece. Hawkins explores the notion of who a person is before a life altering event, and after the predicament. Depending on how you build yourself back up after loss, heartbreak, trauma, and betrayal can set you up to be the writer of your own story, your own path.

Hawkins’ Reckless Girls in all its mystery and slight macabre magic, is empowering in the female narrative.When a female lead comes out conquering the obstacle, and slightly stained by it, but nonetheless triumphant in spite of it.. well, it gets my undivided loyalty.

Rachel Hawkins’ Reckless Girls comes out on January 4th.

I have both so many thoughts and absolutely none at all. This book lit something within me that I've never felt before while reading, and something I hope to experience again in the future.

Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins is a delightful, addicting mystery/thriller that I didn't want to put down. It followed me, stuck in my thoughts, and urged me to continue any time I stepped away.

Reckless Girls has messy characters. Lux, our main character, has been dealt horrible and crappy life circumstances. With a dead mother and a practically non-existent father, she's left yearning for connection, for something to add to her life that she can't get by herself. With Nico, she gets a touch of that, but not entirely what she's looking for. And with Nico's character, we're given the start of a line of privileged, uncaring characters who really only look out for themselves and their wants. And while Lux isn't perfect by any means, I found myself rooting for her throughout the story despite her several faults and misgivings. Characters like Emily, Jake, Amma and Brittany all gave me eerie vibes, but not in the sense of creepy---more so in the suspenseful sense as this book followed wholly. 

This book is slow-burn to the max. I normally don't like this and tend to stray away from it, but when reading this book, it was so easy to intake and fly through the texts that it felt faster than it actually was. I appreciated this immensely, as I felt that, had it not been written in this way, the story would've been lackluster.

Leading with that, I adored the author's writing style. This was my first book from Rachel Hawkins, and it definitely won't be my last. I was sucked into the story immediately, fell in love with the writing and how mysterious and suspenseful it was. It was easy for me to interpret and understand, even despite the several flashbacks and flips to the past and present.

Lastly, I adored the entirety of this story. Hawkins had me guessing until the very end, even when I was suspicious of each and every character. I'm normally a good guesser or anticipater, but Hawkins gave me a run for my money and made it difficult to place the truths among all the lies. While I wasn't the biggest fan of how the ending was a bit rushed, I still did like the turn the story took.

For that, I rate this book 4.75 stars. I really enjoyed and loved this book, and I cannot wait to read again from Rachel Hawkins in the future.

I had heard a lot of mixed reviews on this one but I tried to go in with an open mind. Reckless Girls is being compared to Agatha Christie’s original locked room mystery: And Then There Were None. Christie’s writing style continues to influence many of today’s mystery writers. Last year I read Ruth Ware’s One by One that is also a locked room mystery that I really enjoyed!

I did like the premise of the story although a few things bothered like the overuse of the F-word. I would have liked to have known more back story on a few of the characters. I didn’t feel like i had a good visual on some of the resolution scenes. However the book did keep me interested and it was the fastest I’ve read a book in recent history so that is really saying something!

Synopsis:

Lux has been drifting through life without a plan since losing her mother to cancer. She was forced to leave school to take care of her mother because her father was no longer in the picture.
After her mother passed her desire to return to school seemed pointless. She began waitressing tables fulltime in her current residence of San Diego.
Here she meets Nico who sweeps her off her feet. He promises to take her around the world on his boat. She follows him to Maui where she is forced to work at a resort cleaning rooms while Nico tries to get the boat in working order for the promised adventures.
Nico is hired by two young women to charter them to a remote island. After meeting the women, they invite Lux to join them. She is skeptical but the money they’d earn will help them fund their dream of sailing the globe and why would she want Nico alone with two beautiful women?

Once they get to the island they meet another couple that is already there. They all start off friendly enough but soon the island brings each of them to their truest selves revealing their dark sides. Told in a dual timeline the reader gets a glimpse into all the women’s lives before coming to the island. I do wish Nico’s past would have been revealed more! If you are in for a fast paced thriller give this one a try!

I read this as an ARC because I enjoyed some of Hawkins previous titles. While I did not enjoy "The Wife Upstairs", I thought I would give the author another chance after reading the description of "Reckless Girls". I am glad to have given the author another chance! The element that kept me reading was the character development for Lux, with a rich background focusing on her leaving school to take care of her dying mother and her current feelings of living someone else's dream with her boyfriend's goal to sail to far off lands. The setting was beautiful, an (almost) deserted island in the Pacific, and the descriptive language helped the reading feel immersed in the island climate. The slow build allowed the reader more time to savor the relationships between the characters and the strong emotions of Lux. The action picked up in the second half of the novel and went full steam ahead to a very satisfying ending, which connected many of the plot elements from the first half of the book. I recommend this for fans of closed door mysteries, even though there are no doors on the island...

This is my second novel by Rachel Hawkins! I loved the Wife Upstairs and knew I had to read this!

Let me start by saying I read this in the dead of cold winter....and I have never wanted more to be on a tropical vacation!! This is the perfect vacation beach read!!! I wish I had the opportunity to read this while laying under an umbrella on the beach with a frozen drink!

This book had me hooked from the moment I picked it up and was hard to put down! While I wish the ending had a little more meat to it, overall, I really enjoyed this book. I really didn't want this book to end, and I wish it had a little more depth with the backstories and how it tied together in the end. I would give it a 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars!

I have already recommended I to some of the girls in my book club and they are currently reading it!!

I really hope it ended...with a sequel on the way!

Fast paced and thrilling this is an absolute must read for the season. You will not be able to stop reading once you start this book.

Reckless Girls focuses on Lux, a young woman who's lost her mother, met Nico, a handsome man with a passion for boats, and moved to Hawaii with him, very quickly!

After 6 months in Hawaii Nico receives a proposal he cannot refuse. Two young women, Brittany and Amma hire him to sail to the deserted island of Meroe. An island with a history. A dark history. And they insist Lux joins them. After several days at sea, they finally arrive at the island. But, maybe it isn't deserted after all.

This was a quick and suspenseful read. A non-linear timeline with flashbacks and present day for the characters. I'd say the best way to describe it is a mix of Gilligan's Island meets Lost meets And Then There We're None.

While I enjoyed this read, it didn't pull me in quite like I had hoped it would. I do still recommend it!

I'm giving it a 3.5, with a 4 star rating on Goodreads and other sites reviewed. Reviews to B&N and Amazon sent and waiting on approval.

Reckless Girls just launched into the world this past week! Thanks to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the advanced read!

I can't say this was my favorite. I had high hopes... but it was pretty slow. Nothing exciting happened for the first half or so and then it was still just not all that thrilling for me.

I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of this book, but did feel that overall wrapped up a little too messily (literally and figuratively) for my liking. Extremely descriptive, Meroe Island somehow is able to come across as both the ultimate slice of paradise and hell on earth. This novel does offer suspense and adrenaline to keep the majority of the novel fast-paced. I just couldn’t shake off that from the early chapters, Reckless Girls had an undeniable Lord of the Flies feel. This definitely won’t be for everyone, but I am glad I read it.
Big thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the chance to receive and review this ARC!

I was excited to see that Rachel Hawkins had another book out as I loved The Wife Upstairs. All I can say is, what an entertaining read! If you're looking for an enjoyable thriller that you could finish in one or two sittings, then look no further.

I loved the Before and Now timelines where we slowly learned about various characters pasts, and their motivations for being on the island. Even as the puzzle pieces were coming together, there was no way I could have predicted that ending. The deserted island itself was wonderfully creepy! You do have to suspend belief a little with this one as it does get a little crazy... but it's so worth it.

I really enjoyed The Wife Upstairs by this author, and will definitely read any other books she writes!

This one caught me by surprise. It’s like a mix between lord of the flies and the wilds (tv show-also unputdownable), basically a bunch of people are on one island, no one is who you think they are, and one by one, they get murdered off✈️😬

𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲: thriller
𝗧𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲: murder island
𝗣𝘂𝗯. 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗲: TODAY! January 4th, 2022
𝗠𝘆 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 3 stars
𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 3.8 stars

My thoughts:

It was just too ‘cringy’ for me to ever enjoy but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Too many characters I hated, too much cheating, and bad communication, and then how relaxed the murdering seemed/felt. This one was not for me hahaha

I will say this though, I found myself UPSET by this book. Like skin crawling, wtf moments that sped up my heart rate. That is a feat within itself because to make a reader physically FEEL repulsed by a book is truly a gift few authors possess and is why I’m sure, many of you will love and devour this one!

I loved the setting of this novel. The abandoned island vibes is probably my favorite part of this book. I thought the writing was very atmospheric and I am just dreaming of summer time now. Reckless Girls is a fun novel to escape into for sure. The character build up was great and it was a really fast and easy book to read.

I actually did want more from this book, though. I didn’t like any of the characters and the ending didn’t seem true to Lux’s character at all. I’m still a little unsure of what was going on with the epilogue. I also found the random reviews of the island distracting from the story. I would have also liked to have learned more about the history of the island and to have it intertwined in the story more.

I think this would be a fantastic book club pick. There is a ton to talk about!

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Macmillan Audio for the advanced reader copy/listen! Wow what a great read/listen. I did not want to stop reading/listening. Loved all the back stories of each character and how it all lead to the present. Highly recommend

After her mother died, Lux McAllister didn’t really know what she was doing with her life. She was waitressing when she met a cute boy, Nico, decided to start dating him, and then went to Hawaii with him. The plan was to fix up his boat and sail the seas. Instead, the boat gets damaged and they end up stuck in Hawaii. Enter Amma and Brittney, two young, single ladies looking for adventure. They offer Nico $50k to take them to Meroe Island, a deserted island with a shady past. Lux and Nico see this as their chance to get their dreams back on track, so off they go, but when they get to the deserted island, it’s not so deserted. There’s a couple, Jake and Eliza, waiting there for them. The six become fast friends, partying ensues, until it all starts getting creepy.

A fun, quick murder mystery, this is a great airport, waiting room, or sick day read. The characters are horrible people - don’t even get your hopes up. I couldn’t stand any of them. Fake, shallow, I’m glad they are fiction. However, Hawkins is a fun writer and really did a great job with this one. The characters are horrid, but they are supposed to be, so it’s not meant as a criticism of the book. I liked the writing style, the fast pace, overall a good read.

Thanks to the author, St. Martin’s Press (my favorite publisher, although it stings that I didn’t get the adorable little tumbler mug - let's chat), and Netgalley for this ARC in return for my honest review.

Reckless Girls read like one of those indie beach horror films or a darker Lifetime movie, which was honestly fine for me. Sometimes you just need some thrills as escapism! The plot seemed set-up a little towards the final girl side of things which was also pretty cool - quite a cast of female characters, you can decide who was strong one.

Even though for over half of this book I was having issues knowing where or if it was going anywhere, I enjoyed the travel and locale descriptions. That was enough to keep me reading because I love the ocean, deserted islands, boats as well as the bits of eerie foreshadowing peppered in subtlety a time or two. I knew something was going to happen sometime I just couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. I did try to piece together parts that were given to us within the “before” or flashback segments of various characters so that made it interesting.

I have thought awhile about my issues with character development with this book. I didn’t really feel I was able to connect to any of them, which could have been an age issue for me (they are all early twenties and I’m late forties) as well or how they acted overall. It’s all up to whether that’s important to you or not. We didn’t get a lot of substance about them from their past either, and what we did, I didn’t like because as people they seemed flat and dangerous or just screwed up. Not much you can do with an asshole being an asshole! The flashbacks were only so much content to keep it moving and centered on only a few scenarios important to the story and why they all ended up traveling to where they did. One of the characters was randomly thrown in and seemed out of place too, and though maybe needed in some regard, I had wished he’d been written a bit differently. The abundance of female characters all felt a bit lost, reckless (oh, the title!), and honestly, all the same. I kept forgetting who was who (except the main one, Lux) they were so interchangeable. But they all were certainly messed up in some way. Some were fighters but it all depends on your personal preference for redemption, revenge, or just plain criminal. Maybe even continuing building Lux just a bit more would have helped. It started but then halted a bit. I enjoyed she was a reader, a traveler, an adventure seeker!

I did like the ending for the most part and was satisfied with how it fit to the book and how it led up to it. Pretty wild though! Some things I didn’t expect! There were a few shockers (though I’d have wished for a few more twists), red herrings, and some action violence scenes ripe enough to make it a horror story. There was definitely murder and mayhem. Who doesn’t like murder and mayhem on a deserted island?

I’d say mostly I wanted her to start some twists earlier and create more mayhem and feelings of dread. I say this as a horror reader and editor of course, but if my thriller reads start to go that way, I’d rather them immerse horror fully! I wanted to be more sucked in to the first half of the book. Personally, I would have liked to see maybe more sinister chapters about history of island and how it affected the characters (if it did) and be more interwoven into the full plot and story. But overall, she did a pretty good job connecting loose dots to keep the book moving. In the end she did what a thriller outline asks her to do and she didn’t get derailed into anything not moving her plot forward.

This was a 3.5 read for me (and a 3 from me means I liked it but there were flaws for me), because I couldn’t quite give it a 4. Lucy Foley, Ruth Ware, and Agatha Christie are some of my very favorite authors (and used in advertising this) but it didn’t quite come up to that par. It did scratch my thriller itch, though I wanted more substance and more intrigue. As a gothic fan, it did give good atmosphere of that in places. I don’t mind it being rounded up to a 4 as I think a good amount of readers will get what they desire from it:

a good, quick escapism read which evokes feelings of sitting with a tub of popcorn and watching a film on Shudder.

I’m glad for my time spent reading it and I will definitely read more from her. It wasn’t what I expected but it was still well-written and the ending was cool. This was my first, though I do have her first book sitting here I bought last year and look forward to checking it out.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy for review consideration!

I like Reckless Girls better than the Family Upstairs.

The mystery element is a less unpredictable in this one and the build-up of the atmosphere trancends from the pages.

I found myself flipping the pages in most chapter but some parts felt a bit unnecessary.

Overall, a great experience and looking forward to more from Rachel Hawkins.

These characters were insufferable. I stopped and started this book so many times before finally giving up once they made it to the island. I could not find anyone to root for.

I wanted to love this one. I tried so hard to love it. But it just didn't work for me. It had all the makings for a stellar story - a group of entitled twentysomethings with shady pasts who sail to a creepy deserted island in the south pacific for a restart. But I felt like nothing happened throughout the entire book. I kept waiting for something to happen, but it didn't.

The writing is descriptive and I did feel like I was on Meroe with the reckless girls. That was probably my favorite part of the book. But unfortunately, the story just didn't work for me.