Honestly, the best thing about this book is the cover.
The premise has a great hook: a girls’ boarding school on an isolated island is rife with a sickness called the Tox that turns the girls into monstrosities. Three best friends are enduring their suffering until one of them goes missing.
That cover, that blurb, and I was giddy with excitement.
Review in a nutshell: the book starts out intriguing and quickly becomes ridiculous and inexplicable.
There are three main girls the reader follows: Hetty, our main character; Reese, whose father conveniently lives on the island and has disappeared but leaves behind some very useful items in a deus ex machina kind of way; and Byatt, who of the three is the sickest and is taken away and thus gives our other two characters some motivation. There are numerous other girls, but they are indistinguishable, and often times interchangeable.
There is an attempt at an f/f relationship as well, but it was confusing and misdirected, and I couldn’t make sense of it. Is it a love triangle? Unrequited love? I never could tell.
Kudos to the violence, though. There were some well-described grotesque mutations and some action-packed murders, but these bits of excitement couldn’t cover up that the plot isn’t well developed. The Tox is mysterious with no cause or means of transmission and never given an explanation. The fact that these girls’ parents never investigate why they can’t retrieve their daughters who are sick and dying is briefly mentioned and dismissed. The motivations for the villains don’t exist. The girls seem conveniently accepting that they’re starving and horribly ill and just survive from day to day while civilized behavior devolves a la Lord of the Flies. I was willing to let all this go and just ride along, but as I kept reading my questions grew more numerous and quickly overpowered any enjoyment from the story.
I think I would have enjoyed this book when I was much younger (say, around 11), than as an adult. I often enjoy YA, but this is YYA.
Many thanks to BookishFirst for this advance copy in exchange for my review.
The premise has a great hook: a girls’ boarding school on an isolated island is rife with a sickness called the Tox that turns the girls into monstrosities. Three best friends are enduring their suffering until one of them goes missing.
That cover, that blurb, and I was giddy with excitement.
Review in a nutshell: the book starts out intriguing and quickly becomes ridiculous and inexplicable.
There are three main girls the reader follows: Hetty, our main character; Reese, whose father conveniently lives on the island and has disappeared but leaves behind some very useful items in a deus ex machina kind of way; and Byatt, who of the three is the sickest and is taken away and thus gives our other two characters some motivation. There are numerous other girls, but they are indistinguishable, and often times interchangeable.
There is an attempt at an f/f relationship as well, but it was confusing and misdirected, and I couldn’t make sense of it. Is it a love triangle? Unrequited love? I never could tell.
Kudos to the violence, though. There were some well-described grotesque mutations and some action-packed murders, but these bits of excitement couldn’t cover up that the plot isn’t well developed. The Tox is mysterious with no cause or means of transmission and never given an explanation. The fact that these girls’ parents never investigate why they can’t retrieve their daughters who are sick and dying is briefly mentioned and dismissed. The motivations for the villains don’t exist. The girls seem conveniently accepting that they’re starving and horribly ill and just survive from day to day while civilized behavior devolves a la Lord of the Flies. I was willing to let all this go and just ride along, but as I kept reading my questions grew more numerous and quickly overpowered any enjoyment from the story.
I think I would have enjoyed this book when I was much younger (say, around 11), than as an adult. I often enjoy YA, but this is YYA.
Many thanks to BookishFirst for this advance copy in exchange for my review.