July 9th 2019 | Delacorte Press
Source:
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
I wanted to love Wilder Girls so much. There is so much about this premise that intrigued me. After watching Kayla’s (booksandlala) vlog about this book that sold it to me. In the end, however, I was very disappointed about this book. For the record, I found out it was a Lord of the Flies retelling far too late. I really dislike Lord of the Flies and that would’ve deterred me.
I guess I’ll start with the characters of this book. For one, I couldn’t tell the difference between these characters. I couldn’t even keep track of who they were by their physical differences but those were also so obscure. There are some characters who are sapphic, which is cool, but I was not sold on these characters. The beginning of this book is very slow in its pacing because it should’ve focused on the characters but I couldn’t tell them apart so it was all wasted on me.
If I hadn’t guessed the big reveal--well, not the exact details but we weren’t given a lot of details either way-- of this book so early on, I think I would’ve loved the writing. I could tell that the idea was to have readers at the edge of their seat but that was lost on me. Body horror is not something that gets me. I tend to have a strong stomach for things like that so that wasn’t something I was worried about.
The writing was something I couldn’t deal with. The writing style was so disjointed and all over the place. I could tell that Power was going for a sort of stream of consciousness writing style and I wish more people had talked about that more in their reviews. I’m not a fan of stream of consciousness writing in books so this was beyond frustrating for me. I guess this was purposeful but not done well for me.
I also hated the ending. I know a lot of people loved the ending, and I didn’t mind certain aspects of it, but overall, it was bad. I wanted to know more about how the tox came from and how things came to be. There’s so much more Power could’ve done with that ending and that reveal. Again, I guess this is such a subjective take. The spoilers has more about my thoughts on this.
Overall, this was not a book for me! I wanted so much more from this book.
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