Wilder Girls by Rory Power is a dark, haunting dystopian thriller set on an isolated island where a mysterious plague, the Tox, has ravaged a girls' boarding school. The story follows three friends—Hetty, Byatt, and Reese—as they grapple with their mutated bodies and the harsh survivalist reality. Power’s prose is atmospheric and eerie, creating a tense, gripping narrative with strong elements of body horror and suspense. Themes of friendship, loyalty, and the search for truth resonate powerfully in this unsettling, fast-paced novel. It's a chilling, unique take on survival and transformation.

An interesting and a engaging book but the ending kind of lets the book down. It is still eerie and a great creepy read. I really did like this one.

Oh boy. I hate it when I dislike a book but man I really did not gel with Wilder Girls. I just didn't see the point of it.

I read it as a buddy read with my friend Claire over at ABookandTea.com and even she felt the same.

The story which had a feeling of a modern day Lord of the Flies was a dystopian campus novel which on the surface seemed like it would be a great story but for me it really struggled with pacing and making the reader care about the characters. I just failed to see the point.

The one redeeming factor for me was the duality of characters - you didn't know which ones to believe.

Overall, I was seriously disappointed.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power is available now.

For more information regarding Pan Macmillan (@panmacmillan) please visit there Twitter account.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I had a lot of emotions while reading Wilder Girls, it was an engaging read that I just couldnt put down. ive never been bothered by body horror but Rory Power has an explicit way with words. My concern now is the ending left a lot of loose ends and i'd quite like to know the answers!

A sometimes gory thrilling YA read set in a girls’ boarding school turned quarantine centre, featuring a mysterious disease, the Tox.

Wilder Girls follows main characters Hetty, Byatt and Reese, three friends at a remote island boarding school which no one has left for the last year and a half, if not in a body bag.

The tox hits the island of Raxter, taking on different forms in each of its victims. Animals become more feral, many adults die, and some of the adolescent girls seem to get stronger, as the Tox gifts them with strange scales, claws and powerful urges.

This is a fight for survival, while the girls try to make sense of the tox, make the food go around and understand whether their teachers are with them or against them.

A pandemic-ish read with plenty of grit and strong willed women .
Putting together the 'safe' environment of a boarding school with a dystopian pandemic seems like it shouldn't work but it really does! Made even more poignant and scary reading this during the Covid-19 coronavirus quarantine.

I really enjoyed this read! It was exactly what I was looking for in this book.
No spoilers but the ending!! What!? I did not expect that
Perfect mix of body horror and drama!

Not for me. I tried to persist with this one but after a few chapters I couldn’t get on with the characters or the storyline.

I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

I'd wanted to pick this book up for ages and finally did for The Uncorked Librarian's July challenge which featured dark academia books. Judging by the blurb this one ticked all my boxes - a chilling, savage, and disturbing story set in a quarantined girls' school on an isolated island.

While the premise sounded thrilling, the book itself unfortunately did not meet those expectations. From the start, we're thrown head-first into the action, 18 months into the school's quarantine after an unknown virus (known as Tox) infects the kids, teachers, and the wilderness around them. It felt like a very abrupt introduction which lots of 'telling' rather than 'showing.' We find out how the virus has affected individual characters but again, the context is lost as we don't actually know what Tox is or how it came to be on the island. Granted, that's part of the plot, but it's hard to feel immersed in a story when there are too many holes to begin with.

The characters felt bland and underdeveloped - we only knew them on an infected level rather than a personal level. The f/f representation was sparse and could definitely have been explored further (it felt pointless to touch on it and then never really return). Everyone felt forgettable to a point where if the virus killed them, I didn't really care.

While I wouldn't categorise this one as horror in the conventional sense, I will say it's gory and graphic; this didn't really work for me either. I'm not squeamish but it felt like a lot more effort went into describing the gruesome wounds rather than actually focusing on the plot which overall felt weak to me. I probably should have DNF'd this one as it wasn't for me but I wanted to see how it ended (unfortunately, I was left underwhelmed).

I have had this book as an ARC since early 2020 (Thanks Netgalley and Rory Power). For many reasons, I delayed until now. I'm not a huge fan of horror but the description intrigued me. It's what's increasingly being called "Dark Academia" a work of fiction with elements of horror that takes place in an academic setting. My friend Dr. Amy H. Sturgis did a segment on StarShipSofa.com on Dark Academia if you'd like to know more: http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2021...

And in fact, this is very much the sort of horror that doesn't bother me. Don't get me wrong, it is very dark, and horrific things happen to these girls on a remote island private school off of the coast of Maine. But it is not gory per se, nor is it particularly scary. There is a fair amount of body horror (spoiler: [perpetrated by the "Tox" and the girls themselves]). If that bothers you; best stay away.

Because the story starts well into the girls' quarantine, there's a lot that needs unpacking and the scope of the horror increases as it progresses. There are no info dumps, though, so there's a delicious dawning of the horror. spoiler: [Selfish adults being awful to these children. Scientists doing what's wrong because they are scared. and the "Tox" disfiguring the girls (or killing them after a long illness) and killing everyone else.] But there's also a fair amount of teenage angst about friendships and relationships (among the girls, because there are really only 2 male minor characters). But it's not the over-the-top type of angst, but rather relatable and restrained. And this is what makes this book work, in my eyes, because we see the main character going through all sorts of emotions and changing relationships, despite what's going on around her, because I don't believe that sort of thing ceases when there's trouble. In fact, I would posit that times of trouble are when we look to our friends and the people around us most.

So, in some ways, this is very much YA, but at the same time it is quite mature in theme and in what happens, so I would give this to older teenagers or New Adults first, but it is perfectly tolerable for regular adults, even if you don't normally like YA.
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The writing and characterisation in this book gives it such a claustrophobic, raw, dystopian feel. The world beyond this little school and island and ever-shrinking cast of girls might as well not exist for the reader as well as the characters. It's not a book about nice things or nice people; it's violent and selfish and nasty, and it makes for a gripping, page-turning read for the majority of the book. I would have liked the friendship between Hetty, Byatt and Reese to have been more expanded on, we were told they (especially Hetty and Byatt) were so close and it was special enough to be the driver for a lot of what happens, but I didn't really feel it when I was reading them interacting, either in the present of the story or the brief flashbacks.

The suspense is built up so tightly, I was waiting for it to explode into action at the end. Unfortunately, that's where it fell a bit short. Yes, there is objectively an action-packed finale, but it felt like we lost some of the visceral, up-close tension as too many things happened at once, squeezed into a few chapters, and some of the major plot threads were simply cut off or left hanging. I was very disappointed with some of the decisions Hetty and Reese made at the end; it's hard to explain without spoilers but the build up felt like it had been going a different way and the way the side characters were left was unsatisfying, as was the very end of the story where I needed there to be a little more resolution to feel the story had accomplished anything.

Overall, a great book to read but let down by the way the plot was resolved. 3.5 stars.

Read April 2021.

Raxter School for Girls has been in quarantine for 18 months after an outbreak of something they call "The Tox". No-one knows what it is or where it came from. It's deadly but the few that are left have changed... Byatt has a second spine, Reese's arm is strange, it took Hetty's eye and others have things like permanent blisters, second heartbeats etc.

Despite the issues everything muddles along, until Taylor quits boat shift and Hetty is chosen as her replacement, then things start to change, things aren't right. Then Byatt goes missing and Hetty, with spiky Reese, decides she must do something and find her...

The writing style drew me in and I did enjoy this book but the character development was very lacking, even the mains seemed quite flat, although I did like the scenes between Hetty and Reese. Also I wanted more background on everything!

The ending was very abrupt and I was annoyed since I initially believed that this was a standalone novel but I understand that there is a sequel coming out so hopefully that will answer a lot of those currently unanswered questions.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one but it really kept me intrigued. It was a slow burn and so good!

I just couldn’t get in to this book, it’s slow and the drama is childish. Plus I didn’t care about the characters at all. There wasn’t enough to grip me and keep me reading, the mysteries were kept too mysterious.

DNFed at 14%

⭐ The fast flowing narrative pulls you in.
⭐ I loved the alternating points of view telling the story, especially Hetty
⭐ The disable characters are kick ass & I felt had great representation.
☆ After a fabulous first half it lost its way in the second half.
☆ I felt the conclusion was disappointing leaving me with too many unexplained questions.

This story really hooked me and I wanted to know what would happen next to the main girls throughout the whole book. We join them as they have been struggling through quarantine at their all-girls boarding school for quite some time, due to a mysterious infection manifesting itself as mutations. There's something off from the start, which soon turns desperate, then very dark - and you simply can't stop reading.

Wilder Girls by Rory Power is set in a girls boarding school in the middle of nowhere, and it's been 18 months since they were sent into quarantine.  Many of the girls and teachers have died from the Tox, and there is a small amount of both left alive.  

This is a YA novel that is a mix of fantasy and sci-fi, with a bit of horror thrown in, with the government keeping the school under quarantine.  When one of the girls goes missing, Hetty goes hunting for her.

I enjoyed this book, and the story, and wanted to see how things were going to come out for them all.

Wilder Girls was published on 6th February 2020 and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.

You can follow Rory Power on Twitter, Instagram and her website.

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Pan Macmillan.

The plot of this book sounded really good, I was intrigued with the idea of the Tox and what it had done to the girls in the Raxter school and it was really well written. I liked Hetty, Byatt and Reese, even though it was a very unconventional friendship as it was more like they were only friends due to circumstance rather than because they liked each other. There was a very mysterious vibe surrounding the whole disease and what it does to people and it was intriguing to get the POV of Byatt when she is separated from the girls and being tested on.
However, the ending was quite abrupt and leaves everything wide open which I didn't like! I want to know what happens to them?
Overall it is a dark and compelling book that kept me reading on to discover more secrets and lies but I wanted more from the ending.

Due to author’s recent behaviour in bullying authors of colour, I will be giving a neutral rating and not reviewing.