Wilder Girls begins rather innocuously: two girls, outside, hunting wildlife. It isn't until four paragraphs in that we begin to sense something is terribly wrong... "My other eye’s dead, gone dark in a flare-up. Lid fused shut, something growing underneath. 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." A strange sickness has spread through the land, infecting the young and healthy. When a girls' school becomes ground zero for the Tox, a forced quarantine creates a microcosmic dystopia. The author does a fantastic job of crafting and building this sense of dread and impending doom. I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of beautiful language with grotesque/macabre imagery. The first two chapters were enjoyable, and I am very much looking forward to reading the rest.