This story was a little predictable. With her last book I thought I knew what was going to happen and at the end I was thrown for a loop. I was hoping while I was reading/listening that the same thing would happen, but unfortunately there was not really a big twist. There was a lot going on that kept you involved in the story, I was just hoping for a little more shock based on her previous novel.

It hurts my heart to rate this one as only 3 stars, but it REALLY failed to resonate with me the way I was hoping it would. I was so intrigued by the description, and as a Rachel Hawkins fan, I was SO excited to read this. An abandoned island, a group of strangers, and a little romance...what else could you ask for? Well, a lot, apparently, because this one really wasn't all I hoped it would be. I think the biggest issue with this was the lack of character development, so it felt like all of these characters were thrown together for no reason (it becomes very apparent that that is not the case towards the end of the book) but for the most of the book I just felt myself wondering why it felt so randomly put together. The story just didn't seem to flow and the series of events just didn't make much sense logically. Without too many spoilers, the random romances in this just left a sour taste in my mouth and made me loath all of the characters. The ending made it seem like we should really be rooting for Lux, but the events leading up to it really made it hard for me to root for her and like her. The ending line was the best part of the book in my opinion and I felt like it really didn't fit Lux's storyline as well as I would have liked it to. The lack of likable characters really hurt this story. The ending twist just seemed way too convenient and just really didn't resonate with me. I am sad to say this was not one of my favorites from Rachel Hall. Although this one wasn't for me, I think many readers will still enjoy it for what it is. I did find it interesting and enjoyable but it just is not one that will stick with me for long. My favorite part of the audio was that it was narrated by Barrie Kreinik, who can make me enjoy any audiobook. She is a fantastic narrator. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Squee!! What a dark and twisty ride! A great narration and a fun quick weekend read. A sailing adventure to a deserted island turns lord of the flies.

Thank you NetGalley, Rachel Hawkins, and Macmillan Audio (St. Martin's Press) for the early release audio ARC of "Reckless Girls" by Rachel Hawkins for an honest review!

When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail two women to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii, and longing to travel the world after a family tragedy, Lux is eager to climb on board The Susannah and set out on an adventure. She’s also quick to bond with their passengers, college best friends Brittany and Amma. The two women say they want to travel off the beaten path. But like Lux, they may have other reasons to be seeking an escape. When it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilization than they initially thought, it starts to feel like the island itself is closing in on them. And when one person goes missing, and another turns up dead, Lux begins to wonder if any of them are going to make it off the island alive.

The story itself seemed a bit unrealistic especially with how it ended. It just seemed come across as something believable. I could guess that there was some hidden motive behind the escapade half way through it. I wouldn't say it was a bad book but it did take a bit to get the book to pick up. Unfortunately, it was near the ending that it did. It had potential based off the synopsis. But, it just didn't live up to the hype. I love Rachel Hawkins books so I was a tad bit disappointed in this one. It was, however, a very easy listen and the narrator was good!

This story starts off as a fun adventure tale. Lux is looking forward to traveling with her boyfriend Nico in their boat, the Susannah, (named for his ex). "No big deal." Lux ignores this and other red flags because she is in love with the idea of the type of life she is picturing with Nico. Before their adventure can begin though, they need money and an opportunity comes along for them to make that money quickly. A couple of young women want to charter Nico and Lux's boat for a paradise getaway to a deserted island.

Once they arrive at the island location there is another couple already there with the same idea. At first everyone is a little put out that the paradise vacation isn't just their own, but quickly the group becomes friends.

Lux quickly begins to realize Nico isn't quite the attentive caring boyfriend she thought he was. That and Lux's new friends aren't as trustworthy as they appear either. Everyone has secrets from each other and some of those secrets are deadly. Quickly the the fun adventure story becomes a fun revenge tale that will leave you breathless.

This is my second time listening to Barrie Kreinik narrate, she is quickly become one of my favorite narrators. She is very talented with switching between the different accents and character voices. Absolutely amazing.
Thank you to MacMillan audio and Netgalley for the opportunity to listen to this exciting audio-ARC.

Reviewed for Shelf Awareness, review will run at publication.
Audio notes: The narrator performs several accents here and while I'm no expert, I think she did a good job. One character is something of a chameleon, and I thought the voice acting for her was particularly well done.
***

Rachel Hawkins follows up her New York Times and USA Today bestselling The Wife in the Attic with another twisty suspense, Reckless Girls. Set on an infamous but beautiful atoll just a few days sail from Maui, Reckless Girls contrasts the idyll of beach vacation life with a gothic sense of foreboding and plenty of dark secrets.
Lux has just been fired from her hotel housekeeping job when her privileged boyfriend is hired to bring two college-age women to nearby Meroe Island, known as a World War II refueling stop--and the site of a shipwreck that devolved into murder and cannibalism. When Lux and Nico arrive at Meroe with their passengers Brittany and Amma, they're surprised to find another boat already there. Eliza and Jake are wealthy and glamorous, quick to share their seemingly endless supply of wine and food. At first, their two-week stay is the ultimate vacation, but then a menacing stranger arrives, setting off a chain of events that strains relationships and forces secrets into the open.
As tensions rise and murderous intentions are revealed, readers will frantically urge Lux to take her broken boat and flee, helpless to watch as the plot builds to an explosive conclusion. Hawkins uses the tensions between her young, beautiful characters to take a look at the intersections of class and gender, but there are no innocent people in this treacherous paradise. Fans of the film The Beach and television's Lost will be enthralled.

Reckless girls
4🌟 A beachy thriller - say no more!

Lux and her boyfriend Nico are living in Hawaii when one day, Nico meets two women, Brittany and Amma. These two women offer to pay Nico $50,000 to take them by boat to Meroe Island - a beautiful, secluded island in the Pacific. Lux is all in and excited for the two week trip after meeting and bonding with Brittany and Amma.

Meroe Island has secrets of its own - a history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and rumors of murder. When the four of them arrive on the island they’re surprised to find another boat and couple anchored there - Jake and Eliza. Everyone is enjoying themselves on the remote island, especially Lux, until a strange man appears tipping the group off balance. Secrets of everyone’s past come to light, someone goes missing, someone else turns up dead and everyone is left wondering if they’ll even make it out of Meroe alive.

Although I loved the story and was on the edge of my seat trying to connect all the dots, I didn’t entirely love the ending and the outcome for all the characters. I did love that Hawkins dipped back and forth between present and past for each character.

Overall, as a fan of The Wife Upstairs, this was another great book by Rachel Hawkins and is the perfect beach read!

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced audio copy of Reckless girls - expected release date is January 4, 2022!

Thanks to NetGalley for early access to the audiobook for review. I liked the narrator a lot. However, I did not care for any character. I enjoyed the flashbacks more than the present. The ending was not satisfying. I was disappointed in this one.

I very much enjoyed this read. Gillian Island meets fight club. You never know who’s going to be next.

Thank you Netgalley for this audio edition of Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins.

Lux and her boyfriend Nico have been given the chance of a lifetime. They are to sail their client Brittany and Amma to a remote island off of the South Pacific. And while Lux is quick to bond with the two passengers, it is clear that they have their own secrets, as well as a bit too much interest in Nico. But as they continue to sail, they meet more and more people interested in joining the small party of four, which pulls them further and further into dangerous territory. Will Lux and Nico survive this precarious trip, and remain together?

You know when you go to a restaurant (looking at you Cheesecake Factory) and the menu is so overwhelming that you end up just flipping to a page and picking the first thing you see? Wishing that they had just specialized in burgers, or pasta? That's a bit how this book was. Like, if you'd just stuck to a main plot point, then sure, I would have been into it. But with every added character, and storyline, I just got increasingly overwhelmed, leading to disinterest. It starts strong though, and maybe it's a me issue, but it was just too much.

This story reminded me of the Agatha Christie mystery <u>And Then There Were None...</u>

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Who was behind all the strange and sudden deaths on idyllic Meroe Island?

What had gotten into everyone?

In the end, no one was who they seemed to be: this island had a way of stripping you to your bare bones and forcing your real personality to come to the fore. Meroe's captivating beauty was quickly revealing itself to be a mirage!

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Brittany and Amma hire Lux McAllister and Nico to visit the remote, infamous island. They meet up with a wealthy young couple, Jake and Eliza, who have also decided to moor off the shores of this mystical island. Everything seems to be going along well, but soon passions flare, and just about everyone does a bit of "musical partners."

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As I listened to this well narrated audiobook, (or read the e-book, interchangeably) I caught the thread of several potential plot lines that, in the end, led <i>nowhere.</i> We never find out why Nico puts the title of the boat in Lux's name, apart from an odd explanation that it was for "tax reasons."
Then an odd young man, Robbie, crashes the scene and Lux catches him snooping around their boats. There are some text messages from a school chum that suggest that Robbie has become unpopular for some reason (but no explanation is given as to WHY he now only has one friend left in the world) and then you suspect that he may have been living on the island, but no.... Then you start to wonder why he cared how Jake and Eliza had so much money. Was Robbie an undercover cop, I wondered? (I should have saved my brain cells.)
I also had absolutely no idea what to make of Amma. Her character changed like a chameleon to match the needs of the changing plot. In the end, I had no idea why she did what she did - no spoilers here. Perhaps the Island had bewitched Amma? No idea! You read it, decide, then <i>tell me please!</i>

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The ending was incredibly action-packed and seemed to happen all at once. The Epilogue left me scratching my head. What was Lux up to - was she on a mission to reclaim every wronged girl, one stolen money clip at a time?

<img src="https://i.etsystatic.com/6067880/r/il/6de308/947028086/il_794xN.947028086_cd3o.jpg"/>

Despite all the questions I was left with, I did enjoy this mysterious - but ultimately deadly - romp on a deserted island (or was it really a deserted island?!!!) in the south Pacific. Rachel Hawkins always manages to keep my interest right to the very end. Did I suspect the culprit(s) and the various shenanigans: you bet, and I bet you will too. It was pretty transparent, but the suspense and the action do keep you listening or turning the page. You are so invested in finding out WHAT ON EARTH IS HAPPENING HERE!

Four out of five glistening, salty stars. (Big sigh: winters are COLD and SNOWY up here in Canada!) I enjoyed, vicariously, all the beach scenes and partying... while it lasted.
My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Expected Publication Date: January 4, 2022.

(You can catch this and many other reviews on my partnered Blog: Crossing the Pond Book Reviews: https://crossingthepond.reviews/2021/11/27/reckless-girls-by-rachel-hawkins/ )

I’ve heard nothing but mixed reviews from people about this one, you either love it or hate it, so stepping into it my expectations were already lowered, and I’m sad to say it, but I fell into the hated it category. It’s not a “bad book” by any means....it’s written by Rachel Hawkins, Rachel Hawkins is a very good writer, but this one just fails to live up to the expectations she set with The Wife Upstairs. It’s just very slow...and tedious...it takes so long for the action to pick up about 70% through the book, at which point I was already skim reading, and then the ending was predictable.....It just needed a lot of edits and some plot changes. It had potential. I liked the premise about the mysterious island and group of strangers being deserted and it turning into a blood bath..... It just wasn’t as well executed as I’d hoped.

The audiobook that I received was lovely however, very well produced, and the actor did a great job of keeping the story flowing, even when the book itself seemed to be slowing down.

2.5 ⭐️

I have heard so much about Rachel Hawkins and was super excited to get my ears on this Audio Book of her Reckless Girls, coming out January 4th, 2022. It was quite a creepy trip!
Lux is a little cautious but throws that caution to the wind when her boyfriend Nico is hired to take Brittany and Amma out to an uninhabited island and they ask her to go along. She has been waiting for Nico to get going and fix his boat so she can quit her unsatisfying job and they can head off into the wild blue yonder, so this seems a perfect way to kick start that plan.
As they approach Meroe Island, they are surprised and a bit annoyed to find another boat anchored nearby. That feeling is quickly assuaged when they meet laid back Jake and Eliza and experience how generous they are with their plentiful bounty of food and alcohol. It seems like a perfect settling of new friends with a slightly exotic and mysterious backdrop. Lux is starting to relax and let her anxieties (or should they be red flags?) go with every magical sunset. Then one day a sketchy sailor pulls up and all semblance of ease is erased. Suddenly, all the suppressed secrets begin to spill and no one is who they seem. When one disappears, another is dead, and there is no way to call for help, it all really unravels.
This was a little hard for me to get into, as I didn't like any of the characters! Lux seemed to me to be a bit desperate and needy. Nico was just a d***. Brittany and Amma were annoying and Jake and Eliza were plastic. All that said, once I got past all that, the story was pretty fun! I do a weird thing when this happens in a thriller, where I tend to be excited at the exit of a character! Unsettling, I know. Since I wasn't connected to anyone in particular, it lent the story a rather detached enjoyment. I was carried along by the deepening dread of Lux as the tension grew and horrible things kept affirming her earlier caution in which she was gaslighted by everyone else. That was one of the weird things to me: Lux had rational objections and concerns where no one else did. It felt a bit "Twilight Zone" to me. The ending was not exactly what I thought it would be, but in the vein of what I expected, so it was satisfying to me.
I ended up really enjoying the audio of this book, as the narrator, Barrie Kreinik did a great job with all the characters, especially giving them all their unlikeable vibes! Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the Audio ALC for this escapist suspense!

Lux and her boyfriend Nico are crewing a sailboat owned by two women who want to escape to an island paradise. Lux quickly befriends the two women as they chart a course to Meroe Island, a beautiful deserted island with a sinister past. When they reach their destination, they are surprised to find another yacht anchored offshore. The Azure Sky is owned by Jake and Eliza, a wealthy couple that fits right in with Lux and her crew. It’s not until another, lone boater arrives that things begin to go awry. With tempers and nerves fraying, it’s obvious that there’s a serpent in paradise. Slick, scary and impossible to put down, this has Netflix written all over it

Seven veritable strangers on a remote island in the Pacific that was once home to cannibals. What could possibly go wrong?

Toggling between the present day on the very remote Meroe Island and several “befores” the reader slowly learns each character’s background and relationship to each other.

Nico and Lux (our narrator) are camped in Maui in dead-end jobs raising funds to fix the Savannah, their boat, and get on with the more adventurous life at sea they planned. Brittany and Amma, college friends, want a more off the beaten path adventure and are willing to bankroll those repairs plus more for the couple to sail them to Meroe.

Once they arrive, they find a catamaran already there and a golden couple sunning on its deck. Although not exactly the remote adventure Brittany and Amma thought they were getting, they go with it as this couple Jake and Eliza are fun and loaded and willing to share their stash of excellent food and booze.

Life is a party on this island for several days before a stranger drops in causing their utopia to collapse. Tension fills the island, someone goes missing, another turns up dead and all hell breaks loose on the island as the “befores” catch up to the “nows”.

Rachel Hawkins, author of The Wife Upstairs, gives us another fun, fast-paced thriller that keeps you guessing until the very end! Thank you NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and of course Rachel Hawkins for the advanced copy. All opinions are my own. Reckless Girls comes out on January 4th and will be a great start to your 2022 reading!

I received an ALC of this book in exchange for my honest review. I enjoyed this tropical adventure of Lux and her boyfriend Nico who were hired by two women to sail to a remote island in the South Pacific… what could possibly go wrong with that scenario? I’ll be honest ( as usual ) I found this book to be way to predictable and was less than thrilling for a thriller. I did however enjoy the story. Just no jaw dropping moments for me like I hope to get out of a book in the thriller genre

This is a book that will keep you guessing until the end. Who is the villain? Are they all villains? Or am I overthinking this? The story is mainly based on Meroe Island, a remote island off the coast of Hawaii with a nefarious past.

The story is told from the point of view of Lux, a somewhat lost girl whose mother recently died after a long illness. Taking care of her mother sent her life off course and when she meets Nico while waitressing in San Diego, she is easily swept off her feet and begins making plans to sail around the world with him. But first, Nico and Lux are hired by two women to take them to Meroe Island, and since the money is needed, they agree. When they arrive, they find two people already there, however, this appears to be a fortuitous surprise because Eliza and Jake are fun, welcoming, and willing to share their food and alcohol. The arrival of Robby a few days later is not as welcomed - he is annoying and suspicious and has no problem inserting himself into their tight-knit group.
After he arrives, strange things start happening, and people start to go missing.

This was a quick, easy read. If you love a thriller and are looking for a fun, easy book, this is for you! I enjoyed every minute of it!

I thoroughly enjoyed the audio version of this. A remote, tropical island setting and a plethora of evil intentions are the focus of Rachel Hawkins latest psychological thriller. Two women charter a boat owned by a young couple and the four make their way to a remote Pacific island, where they unexpectedly encounter other visitors. Multiple narrators successfully portray the tension between the characters and move the plot along quickly. Personalities clash and someone ends up dead. Dual time periods shed light onto the nefarious intentions of the characters and add abundant suspense. This is a multilayered, smart suspense ideal for fans of Ruth Ware and Shari Lapena. Fans of Hawkins’ first book, the Wife Upstairs, will not be disappointed.

Hey!!! Here's my latest read and I really enjoyed it #recklessgirls --Tropical settings and devious beautiful people cruising to a cursed deserted island in the Pacific. Murder and mayhem follow as the week wears on. A couple with a boat takes 2 girl friends on a chartered expedition to this place for alotta cash. What starts out as an idyllic societal familial group turns quickly sour as things spiral seemingly out of control. Expect the unexpected. Great audio job by @macmillan.audio as always! Loved the narrator too! This was so much fun i really like this author's stories, Im going to have to pull up her backlist @ladyhawkins (did i tag you right??) Many thanks to the author publisher @netgalley and macmillan audio for providing me this book for review. Dreaming of paradise in the cold start of winter - read this and be transported to where the palm trees sway!

Wow, this was very engaging. I listened to the entire book uninterrupted in one sitting, staying up until 2am to finish.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advance copy of the audiobook in exchange for my honest review.