Wilder Girls is all the rave these days amongst Dystopian thriller fans and I'll admit, it is one heck of a powerful and edgy book unlike anything I've seen in YA in recent years. Which is saying A LOT as YA tends reuse a lot of plotlines and tropes. Power is an author to look out for. From page one of Wilder Girls, I was hooked, and I blew through the first 200 pages in one sitting. Had I not had to get up early the next morning for work, I would have most likely stayed up to finish it.

The entire premise centers around this disease that our characters have. It's so incredibly brutal, dark and terrifying. It has a creepy setting that'll make you never want to leave your house, and great mystery of what is actually happening to these girls. This is the sort of book that I can't say much about without spoiling things. It is lyrically written but with lots of disturbing imagery. It plays with themes of dark and light, beauty and ugliness, death and life. I struggle a bit with how to rate this, but ultimately I think it is an impressive accomplishment.

The story is full of clever ideas that will linger in my mind. The mystery of the story is unveiled with perfect pacing, slowly, methodically, seemingly innocently, until you realize too late the story's got its hooks in you and you couldn't free yourself if you tried. But in the best possible way.

I don’t really know what I just read.

It starts out really good and is incredibly interesting from the beginning. It kept my interest through to the end, though some parts are kind of slow.
I liked the main characters Hetty and Reese. I’m still not entirely sure I liked Byatt much. I got the feeling she was a compulsive liar, but it’s hard to tell. Something about her was fishy, though they never truly explained what.

I wanted to love this more than I did. I hate when none of my questions are answered, and this book certainly does that. We never learn how/why the Tox starts. We don’t learn hardly anything about the girls’ parents or pasts. We don’t know much about the scientists studying them. It’s incredibly frustrating. The end is even more frustrating because it ends on such an open note. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes that works with the story (The Miseducation of Cameron Post comes to mind), but with this one it was just very unsatisfying.

It had an incredible premise and I loved the idea of the Tox, but it just quite work for me.

I honestly could probably rate it lower, but I’m not going to because I did somewhat enjoy it. I just wish it would’ve explained a little bit more.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power is the thrilling, horror-filled feminist Lord of the Flies we’ve all been waiting for. Following three friends under quarantine at their boarding school, this novel does everything it can to make your skin crawl. Using brutal and deliberate detail, Power doesn’t hold anything back as she describes the horrors happening on the island and to the girls while their bodies are turning against them. When one of the friends goes missing, it becomes a race to find her as well as unearthing the secrets that are being kept from them.

This was one of the most unique, gut-wrenching young adult novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Especially since Power didn’t shy away from the horrors of the illness, the stark desperation of survival and the viciousness of hunger. There were times I wanted to stop reading because of how intense, emotional and downright terrifying it was, even the quiet moments where the girls are sitting on the rocks by the sea. Wilder Girls is definitely the chilling kind of story that stays with you long after you’ve finished reading.

If I had to say that there was anything I disliked about the book, it would only be that the ending felt a bit rushed and slightly unfinished. I’m not sure if that was the point but it left me feeling a bit off after such a powerful lead up. Despite that, I chose to give it five stars because of the multitude of things that I loved about the story. A few of those things are as follows:

- Queer representation! The female/female relationship that develops is wonderful.
- Writing! The horror was in the words - in the details of the disease and how it affected the girls. There were no jump scares. Just creeptastic creatures dwelling in woods, grotesque things happening to the girls’ bodies and secrets all around. All in vivid, stylistic writing. Power is one of the best I’ve read.
- Characters! A diverse cast of ladies who are allowed to be human, right on the page. They are allowed to be soft and fierce, angry and loyal, terrified and strong without the reader being told to dislike that part of them.
- Action! The action scenes, which I thoroughly enjoyed, were so well written, absolutely thrilling and very edge-of-the-seat.

I highly recommend this debut novel by Rory Power especially if you like body horror, sapphic girls at boarding school and creepy settings and creatures.

2.5 stars

To start off with the good: I loved the dark atmosphere of this book and it was delightfully brutal in ways that I wasn’t expecting.

However, the characters and plot were not well developed. The plot reveals were sloppily handled, the pacing was strange, and the ending left a lot to be desired.

Wilder Girls was an engaging and interesting book. All of the characters are flawed in some way, and not just physically- neither totally good or evil. I would describe it was Lord of the Flies meets Annihilation with elements of sci-fi, dystopia, survivalism, with some romantic interests (not much). The ending left me wanting more- maybe a prequel, or sequel to the aftermath.

<blockquote>Some days it’s fine. Others it nearly breaks me. The emptiness of the horizon, and the hunger in my body, and how will we ever survive this if we can’t survive each other? “We’re gonna make it. Tell me we’re gonna make it.”</blockquote>

so much about this book is so good. the synopsis. the premise. the chillsiness it delivers. the characters. the tantalizing dislocation of WHAT IS THIS THAT IS HAPPENING? the dread and unease. the tension. that goddamn cover.

<img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1544204706l/42505366.jpg"/>

i did not love it unconditionally, but what i did love i loved HARD.

set on an island-isolated girls’ school in maine, the reader is dropped instantly into an atmosphere of extreme and horrific circumstances: what was once a fully-functioning, fully-populated school has been diminished by a mysterious affliction known as the tox, wiping out all but two of the teachers and most of the students, with terrible consequences for the ones who managed to stay alive.

the school is located off the coast of a naval base, who have ordered the island quarantined and promised that the CDC is working on a cure. meanwhile, the navy has been providing supplies by way of boat drop-offs collected by the few girls allowed to travel beyond the walled-off school grounds, but the quantity and quality of the supplies have worsened the longer the situation continues, the packages themselves oddly composed: <i>Even when there’s no bread, there’s always shampoo</i>, and the girls are all but starving as they cluster together in the school, functioning in a mostly cooperative free-for-all setup, awaiting the next outbreak.

and the outbreaks are intense. <i>They cycle in seasons, each one worse than before until we can’t bear it anymore,</i> and, if the girls survive, they are left each time with a different physical reminder of their ordeal: glowing hair, silver scales, or with more monstrously disfiguring body horror manifestations; bones protruding through the skin, eyes fused shut, with “something” growing underneath…

<i>It’s like that, with all of us here. Sick, strange, and we don’t know why. Things bursting out of us, bits missing and pieces sloughing off, and then we harden and smooth over.</i>

the patterned timing of the flare-ups, the age of the victims, the ceremonial rite-of-passage way they acknowledge a girl’s first episode gives it a very OUR CHANGING BODIES vibe, and girls know all too well the bloody body-horror transformations of puberty even without something like the tox, but this goes beyond allegory, the girls keep on dying, and it’s unclear whether the root cause is illness, toxin, biological agent, etc, but it’s one that has also affected the local wildlife, causing forest-dwellers like foxen, bears, and bobcats to be a little bigger, more aggressive and more desperately hungry, as misshapen as the humans.

<i>There used to be horses, four of them, but early in the first season, we noticed how the Tox was starting to get inside them like it got inside us, how it was pushing their bones through their skin, how it was stretching their bodies until they screamed. So we led them out to the water and shot them.</i>

so far, it is everything i love and all the best parts of [book:Lord of the Flies|7624], <i>The Village</i>, [book:Pure|9680114]: survival in a dangerous landscape, mysterious and terrifying illness, giant freaking animals, teen girls with guns and shifting loyalties and EXOSKELETONS and important decisions to make about trust and love and loyalty and how and when to play your cards and all of the seeeeeekrits that go with the us v. them situation of limited resources and even-more-limited information and not knowing what’s really going on ‘out there.’

i love the characters, the switching POVs, the escalating tensions and the bold authorial moves. but then that ending. that’s no way to say good-bye. i assume it’s a case of where they’re interested in a follow-up book but want to see how this debut sells before committing to a follow-up, but i’m not in love with where the book cuts off. the final scene works as a final scene and an appropriate ending-<i>mood</i>, but there’s too much left unresolved <i>before</i> that sunlit-water-for-credits-to-roll-over ambiguous optimism. i was expecting a standalone book, and this feels unfinished. i loved it until then, but unfortunately, that’s how books work: the last thing you read-feel is what looms largest in your mind, and for me, it was a quiet disappointment. everything else, though, thumbs up!

now gimmie a second book!

Had Lord of the Flies been a modern title with a feminist twist, it may have been The Wilder Girls. As it stands, Wilder Girls is far more interesting, more twisted- perhaps even darker than the former, and a thoroughly enjoyable read for both teenagers and adults alike.

Power has an exquisite sense of just what it is to be a teenage girl, something others too often forget or ignore completely. The trials and tribulations of coming into your own combine with the chaos of a mysterious illness that has isolated a boarding school completely. Cut off from the world, the girls have only two adult figures in their lives, and no word of their friends and family from the outside world. There's a distinct sense of paranoia that is wholly satisfied by the end, as well as a fear and a strangeness to rival Jeff Vandermeer.

At once a beautiful beach read and something that will make you think far deeper about the world as a whole, Wilder Girls is a must have.

Holy #$%&@!

I've been up since...3am, I think, finishing this. Could. Not. Put. It. Down.

It's like if...The Lord of the Flies and Annihilation had a really feminist baby who was obsessed with The Hunger Games. Very gritty, very gory and violent, lots of badass females trying to survive a virus that...literally makes you "one with nature."

I could not recommend this more.

Book review: Wilder Girls by Rory Power
read courtesy of Netgalley.com
Publication date: July 9, 2019

I didn't want to put this book down, until I did... at the end... disappointed & frustrated.

Back to the beginning. I was hesitant at first to even begin the story when I read its comparisons to Lord of the Flies, which I didn't like. (Sure, I understand LOTF's significance and symbolism and all of that, but I just wasn't into reading about an island full of 12 year old boys.) So I wasn't too excited to read about an island full of teenage girls. The author of Wilder Girls, however, caught my attention with a very telling sentence of how the girls were about to become, um, wilder, "Even when there's no bread, there's always shampoo." Though I didn't know at the time that was prescient, or actually backstory, but either way, it provided me a way to see the "feminist" point of view without having the perspective shoved down my throat -- for which I was honestly also fearful, given the fem-LOTF references.

Some notes I took along the way...

--I was surprised that the islands on which the story took place were in Maine; I think 'islands,' and I think tropical. I liked the Maine setting, because it made sense that a girls' school would be in Maine.
--I was confused that all of the girls had different symptoms. If they were all suffering from the same 'disease,' then why were they all showing different manifestations? This was even more confusing when, later on, the girls figured out that one thing was causing everyone's illnesses.
--The different manifestations of the disease felt derivative to me of the Star Trek: Next Generations' episode called Genesis.
--It wasn't cleared up until the end why males and animals and plants also got the disease, which of course is the point of a mystery 😏
It never made sense to me why the Navy would keep arming the girls' school and replenishing their ammunition. --The adults were also keeping knives away from the girls but not bullets - although, some of that is explained later in the story. And... the Navy sends bullets but not space heaters?
--Another good, succinct explanation of the girls situation, "At some point the order was alphabetical but we've all lost things, eyes and hands and last names."
--Feminism isn't the same as female... what purpose did it have to not have the disease kick in until puberty, especially since the disease struck males and animals, too?
--It's not clear why the girls had to surreptitiously and clandestinely be moved to be examined, especially because the attending physician seems like a mensch.
--When the girls were running, --and had to shoot a gun, how come no one back at the school heard the shot?
--I loved the reason the parents were given to cut off communication with the students, especially because the reason the girls were initially told communication was cut off made no sense.
--Towards the end, just at the point where I was having difficulty remembering which 'side' everyone was on, the author provided a brief memory through a character that helped place each character in perspective again.

And that's when it all fell apart. The end of the story made no sense. It felt rushed and didn't follow any trajectory that was started anywhere prior to the end. So, so disappointed! I really, really wanted to like the story, but it ended so abruptly and awkwardly that I felt cheated out of a real ending.

Wilder Girls is a weird, visceral book that will stay with me long after reading it.

The story takes place 18 months into a quarantine at a girls' school on an island. An epidemic broke out, sickening the girls and their teachers. Most of the adults are dead, and the girls are changed, their bodies strange and different. The island itself has changed, vegetation overtaking everything outside the school gates, and the animals have become treacherous.

This book is genuinely creepy. It's not horror in the "don't go in there!" sense, but it's disturbing and weird, and I felt very tense reading it. Some readers may find the pace a bit slow, but I thought it worked well for the story. When the pace picks up in the last third, it's a gut-punch, and the ending is really well done.

The Wilder Girls reminded me of The Maze Runner. I hated the Maze Runner.

I first tried reading this book a few weeks ago but couldn’t get past the choppy, disjointed writing so I put it to the side. I picked it back up a few days ago to find that the fragmented sentences were the thoughts of the characters but still, when the writing style changes it’s not much better. There are many unnecessary details, which is one of my pet peeves. I did like the action and the development of the main character. After finishing the book, I could not figure out the point of it as the story just stops with no resolution. The story had potential but could have been so much better if executed differently, and if it had an actual ending.

I received a copy of Wilder Girls from NetGalley for review. If I had borrowed the book from the library, I probably would not have continued reading after the first few chapters. I do feel bad about giving a negative review, but I must be honest, this book was not for me. Everyone is different and I do hope others find joy in it. #netgalley

This book was a breath of fresh air that I honestly couldn’t put down. I was always itching to jump back into the wonderfully horrible and gritty world of Raxter and into the race for a cure of the indomitable Tox. Power has created a poignant environment that you can live, breathe, and feel as you devour each page. Her girls offer the same experience of nit and grit and pain, with so many odds and ends that their messiness is real and human. The meshing of science fiction and horror brought me to a terrifying and often grotesque place, but each word and each bone chill are worth the discomfort. Her descriptions are intoxicating and as messy as her girls, and it’s that sort of reality that makes this story both heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching. This debut novel isn’t one to miss out on, and I cannot wait to see what sort of worlds and characters Power brings to the shelves next.

Do you like mystery?

Do you like horror?

Do you like suspense?

Then I have a book for you! 

Wilder Girls completely blew all my expectations out of the water. I enjoyed it from the very first line to the end. I even tried to finish it in one day. I was up until 1 AM trying to frantically find out how it ends but ultimately my sleepy eyes won that fight. The book is first person and primarily from Hetty's point of view but we do get one other persons point of view later on. I really enjoyed Hetty. She was headstrong and extremely faithful to her friends. Byatt is an important character in that she is a catalyst to Hetty's growth. Nothing really ever changed between her and Reese as Reese was more of a loner that slowly became part of their group. I really enjoyed Reese and finding out how she really feels and seeing her pull through some of the toughest parts of this book. 

The ending and the explanation of the "how" or I guess I should say origin of the Tox completely made my skin crawl. When Hetty began screaming "Get it out! Get it out of me!" I felt right there with her. Cue shivers as I type this because holy hell I would have never thought of it. This is Rory Power's first book but needless to say I'm firmly hoping it wont be her last. She brings a certain brand of chilling suspense and eeriness to her story that I find hard to see translated from the best horror films. 

The only real issue I had with the book is a personal thing in that the ending just... happens. After some reflecting I realized it parallels a good old fashion horror movie where you just really don't know how it all ends in the grand scheme of things and that is the scariest bit of all.

This book was given to me for an honest review via ARC. Thank you #netgalley & #rorypower. This book is a YA horror for “survival of the fittest” between a group of young girls. It’s a feminist Lord Of the Flies. This is a great book and I’m ready for book 2. #rorypower bring up a 2nd book to #wildergirls. :) @rorypower

I think I should start this review by saying I normally don't like zombie or pandemics books—and that's kinda what this is—so I was probably not the target reader for this to begin with. Nevertheless, I'm a pretty adaptable reader so I wanted to give it a go.

But here's what happened:

1. I STRUGGLED with the prose. I love me a good, witty fragment to really amp up the atmosphere or emotion on a page. But there were just. So. Many. On one page I counted and 60% of it was written in fragments v. full sentences. Some pages were 100% fragments. It gave the story a very choppy, incomplete feel and made it difficult to connect to the characters.

2. A lot of the decisions near the end felt unrealistic or (and I don't know how to say this without sounding sassy) incongruent with logic <spoiler> Wouldn't one of the girls at least THINK that the moment they escaped quarantine and got on the mainland they would be shot automatically? Because logically, that's what would happen. And no one ever stopped to contemplate that MAYBE it might be a good idea just to die on the island versus sneaking on land and infecting the rest of the world???? These thoughts should have AT LEAST been explored, if not impacted the character's decisions. Also, while we're here—how did Byatt and her caretaker NOT know that kissing/touching would spread the infection...? The fact that neither of them thought about it is completely unbelievable to me </spoiler>.

That all being said, I didn't hate the book! There was so much potential with the creepy atmosphere, suspense, and mystery subplot that I kept flipping the pages no matter what. And I really enjoyed how natural queerness appears in the characters. So there was some true merit to the story, which I why I gave it the three stars I did.

Give it a go yourself and see!

*e-arc provided by netgalley. All opinions are my own*

I'll be honest, I didn't even read the synopsis of the book. This was all abut the cover and it appears I'm not the only one who loved the cover!

Ok so on to the book....there is going to be a part 2 right, more info on what happened in the past has to be provided. There will be a prequel right??

Hetty, Byatt and Reese all live at Raxter School for Girls, which is on an island, There is a wicked virus that claims the life of teachers and students , but somehow supply boxes are dropped and some of the girls have to go an retrieve these boxes. Mind you this wild island has pretty much every type of animal living there. There isn't much backstory to the virus and why these girls are all on a remote island.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc!

So, I kind of read this one blind. I picked it up because a) I loved the cover and b) the quote “feminist Lord of the Flies”.

This book is kind of amazing.

You’ve got a pandemic here, but it’s unlike any you’ve read before. And our girls are so very fierce and even when faced with horrors beyond belief, remain true and bold. I loved them.

The book definitely has an edge and the author doesn’t pull punches. Fair warning for those who like things soft and pretty.

Such and unusual and compelling book. I can’t wait to see what the author does next!

Ok, before I begin with this review let me go ahead and state the obvious. That freaking cover is beyond gorgeous! Definitely one of my favorite covers of 2019 so far. Ok, now to the review portion.
This book is described as a feminist “Lord of the Flies”( one of my favorites) and while I do get that sentiment, it is also had a few elements that reminded me of Michael Grant’s “ Gone” series which I absolutely loved as well. Here’s the blurb:
“It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.”
Rory Power has a wonderful way with words. I was transported to the island almost as soon as I began reading . Great worldbuilding.This book was creepy. Definitely made my skin crawl and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I won’t say anything about the actual story itself, but I will tell you that it is told in two alternating views. Hetty and Byatt. I loved the friendship theme that was evident throughout the story. I found myself rooting for a certain pairing. There was such a strong message within the three hundred and sixty-eight pages of this story.
This would have been a five-star read however, I did have a few issues with it. The first was the ending. It kind of left me hanging in the balance. I’m curious to see if there will be a sequel but I would have loved a few more chapters to wrap things up a bit more. I also felt like the backstory of it all could have been more detailed. Lastly, I believe that we have only just begun to scratch the surface of the three main characters. There’s so much more I need to know! *hint, hint for that sequel*
Overall, I absolutely enjoyed this read and look forward to reading more from Rory Power in the future. She’s in a lane all by herself and really adds a freshness to the YA genre.
Trigger warnings include talk of suicide, suicide, animal killings, violence, gore, body mutilation, starvation and more. An extensive list of the trigger warnings can be found on the author’s website, https://itsrorypower.com/wilder-girls/.

* I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

Wilder Girls is gorgeously grotesque while also highlighting the strength and resilience of girls and women, both metaphorically and physically, considering how often the healthcare system falls short. This book is a dystopian representation of all of that, and that's precisely what makes it stand out, what makes it special. The suspense kept me glued to it, kept this story on my mind even when I had to rip myself from it. Wilder Girls is a vital, important tale.

First of all, this cover is one of my all time favorites. Absolutely stunning. I thought this book was really good and well written. I love the boarding school aspect. I wish we had gotten to know the girls a little bit more before all the action was taking place, I kind of had a hard time really feeling with the characters. Overall though, I enjoyed it. It was captivating and creepy and kept me guessing. The ending was a little underwhelming and anticlimactic in my opinion. Everything leading up to the end was really exciting and kept me on the edge of my seat and then the end end was a bit too open-ended for me and left me with a lot of questions. Which I’m sure a lot of people love that and will really love this book. I personally like a little more to be answered at the end. Along with everything being exciting and having really good descriptions, once we got to the end it felt really rushed. All of a sudden they found Byatt and got her and it was over. It took so much just to get to her that once they found her it felt anticlimactic. The atmosphere this book gave off was amazing--really creepy, and suspenseful with good descriptions, I felt I was able to picture everything really well and almost feel like I was in this story with them.