Wilder Girls

OH MY GOD!!! This was absolutely FANTASTIC!!! The character were absolutely WONDERFUL the the premise was both interesting and Terrifying!!! The writit style was really different and a little odd, but it was so well done that it was easy to read!!! I HIGHLY recommend this if you like horror and survival stories!!! It was kind of like girl-version of lord of the flies but they get the Weirdest plague I have Ever heard of!!! This was DEFINITELY a fantastic book to read for my last-book-of-the-year!!!

I have very high expectations in this book! The premise is very interesting, the writing style is simple yet so beautifully written, it has sapphic romance and the cover is pure art. And yet, I still find it lacking. I was expecting it to be creepy like how everybody made it out to be but the nightmares never came to eat me alive. Also, I didn't quite like how the ending went and it even made me more confused. It left me with so many unanswered questions and there was no explaination or whatsoever on how or why did the Tox happen or where does it come from, which made it kind of hard for me to connect with the story. However, I still enjoyed it and its fresh and a new take to the horror genre.

The premise of this book was interesting but the conclusion left me wanting — more explanation or more details or more clarity. It felt unresolved. I don't mean it needed a happily ever after but I fell like the reasons behind what happened on the island were never made clear enough to feel like the story could end.

I would not NOT recommend the book but I would definitely caveat my recommendation with the fact the ending was somewhat unsatisfying.

2.5 Rounded to a 2

I was expecting a lot more with this one after reading the premise. It was very interesting to start, but just didn't catch my attention much. It felt rushed in some spots and slow in others. Not a very put together format or flow (for me anyway).

I'm honestly not sure if this is a series or ... the ending leads one to believe there should be more to it. I honestly can't stand when a story just abruptly cuts off and leaves me feeling unsatisfied...open-ended finishes are great when they work and make sense. This did not.

(“Why me?!”, impromptu art by my daughter when I asked her to do something for me) “Why me?!”, I asked my wife, “Why do I always have to choose the worst books?!” - with the prettiest covers, I might add. Because this book is a classic example why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover – which, in this case, is beautiful whereas the contents read like they've partly been ripped out of the script to some mediocre horror b-movie and partly been born out of the brain of a pubescent teenager. Maybe a sadistic ecology freak was on-board as well because at times the book reads like something along the lines of “nature strikes back”. The plot is simple and the premise interesting: A female-only boarding school on a small island; “the Tox”, some kind of plague, ravaging the wildlife, the girls and their teachers. Hetty, Byatt and Reese, three pupils and friends, are trying to survive. Suddenly, when Byatt vanishes Hetty learns something sinister is going on on the island... I'm not even sure where to start with my criticism because this book has almost no redeeming qualities: The writing is weird and I found myself asking “what did she smoke?!”: “And in the other hand, Raxter. No ferry on the horizon, mainland far and farther. Water and shoreline born new every day. Everything what it wants to be. Everything mine. I'm buried there no matter where I go.”The wise old woman expressing the above is Hetty, a teenager of 16 years... Yeah, riiight... The pacing is all over the place, too: Slow introductive scenes into the not-so-normal school life with the Tox dominate the first 50% of the book. Then, suddenly, things escalate quickly and we find ourselves in outlandish fights with cross-breeds between human and flora (!), and corrupted animals. Then again, things come to a screeching halt and we're back inside the school. As if that wasn't enough already, we're witnessing school girl tragedy, the evil headmistress, the misunderstood well-meaning teacher and lots of other characterless characters. In a rather simplistic attempt to cater to a broader audience, there are some LGBT motifs tacked on to the story. Unfortunately, they feel completely artificial and add nothing at all to the story. The entire ménage à trois between our three lacklustre “heroines” feels completely off and weird. Worst with respect to that, though: I didn't care one bit. Byatt? Reese? I couldn't care less whom of which makes Hetty's heart beat faster. This entire book feels very bizarre but not in a good way. I progressed from “bizarre”... ““Don't,” [...] cries from behind me. But I can't listen. It's not him anymore. I lean hard, brace my hand on his elbow as I wedge the knife deeper and deeper and start to lever it up. There's a heart to all this. There has to be.” ... by way of “seriously?!”... “He's rotting from the inside out.” ... to “disgusting”... “Until finally. A snap. And inside his rib cage, I see it. A beating heart, glossed in blood. Built from the earth, from the bristle of pine, and inside, there is something else, something more, something living. I don't think twice. Just claw at it with both hands, and it comes screaming out with a wet tear.” ... within this very scene and the entire book. Especially the above scene made me actually think that these might simply be the feverish violent fantasies of a pubescent boy, tinged with bloodthirsty revenge. Curiously, Hetty of all people sums up my feelings for this book pretty well: “Person after person collapsing under the weight of this place, lie after lie, and I've had enough of this. Enough of these confrontations, of secrets spilling out of us like blood.” Blog Facebook Twitter Instagram

It's been a while since I was shaken up over a book.

That being said, I loved the setup of the story. You don't really know what the tox is, there's the question of a cure, and what's going on behind the scenes. But as the book progressed, it left me feeling intrigued, but none of the questions were getting answered.

And then the ending. Oh my God, the ending. I am so confused. The last line makes no sense, and I'm left with so many questions. The most important one being: what was the point?

{Spoilers}

I HATED the fact that, as much as Hetty had a resemblance to plain white bread, her only good quality was that she thought of other people. But at the end, after she goes on her spiel with the headmistress about the other girls' safety, she totally abandons them to be eaten or to be blown up. Hetty also says multiple times that her dad is in the Navy but it's never built on. When she and Reese go to the visitor's center, I expected her to call up her dad since they must've had some communication with the mainland if they were able to evacuate. The ending, as I mentioned, was very disappointing. There's no concluding statement about waiting for the bombs to arrive or at least trying to go to the mainland in Reese's boat. There's no cure for the tox and there's no reason as to why the tox even started. It's vaguely suggested that it's due to global warming, but we're never given a straight answer.

This book does a great job of creating stakes, but I feel like the questions don't get answered. The ending is very disappointing and left me confused and angry if anything.

Here it is. Best damned thing I read all summer (so far!), and I really expected to be let down because I've kind of been disappointed by the last 10 YA novels I've attempted. I was also concerned because the cover is so gorgeous. Don't laugh! Sometimes they put beautiful covers on lackluster reads just to polish them up.
I'm not going to read anyone else's reviews, because I'm sure this book will have it's haters. I LOVED it and COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN!! Yes the girls are a little hard to tell apart. It's mostly their personalities: Hetty, grumpy and tough, Byatt, grumpier and tough, Reece, grumpiest and tough, but it worked for me that they were friends and had closed ranks in the midst of an emergency. The world-building was above par.
I think it belongs in the environmental horror genre and it is amazing. I had some preconceptions going in and I just want to state that comparing this book to Lord of the Flies is a stretch. There are adult authority figures present. Second, someone told me this was heavy on same sex love and...no, I disagree. It's about real friendship, there is one relationship sort of highlighted, but understand that this story is almost NON-STOP action and ain't nobody got time for blossoming romances.
Love, love, loved it. I don't need a sequel or a series. It was perfect.

I was hesitant to read this because Lord of the Flies is not a favorite, but it is not a retelling of Lord of the Flies, but like Lord of the Flies mixed with body horror sci-fi. So I enjoyed it. The ending felt incomplete, so I was expecting to see a sequel, but I didn't. So the ending was a little disappointing, but it fits. I liked the interaction between the girls. I liked seeing from Byatt and Hetty's perpective. The body horror was not too gory, so the body mutations were ineteresting and added well to the story. There some things that weren't directly answered, but you can guess what the answers are.
I guess overall I wasn't ready to leave yet. I want to see more with these girls.