Rory Power’s debut novel, Wilder Girls, is beautiful, raw, and extremely current for our society today. This feminist YA dystopian themed novel will leave you captivated with the poetic way in which Power delivers horror and angst all mixed into this world she has created. I was left raw by the plot twist and kept wanting more with each page that I read. I couldn’t put this book down; it had me hooked from the start.
“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.”
The characters were easy to connect with and each brought a new way of looking at this world filled with the virus named “Tox.” Each girl is affected differently but it always yields the same results in the end: death. Hetty, and every other girl, has been in survival mode for almost two years and have been completely abandoned by the outside world due to needing to be quarantined. The tox virus seems to have only affected the school and the surrounding island that it lays on. Everything from the ground to the animals are affected in some way and have become crazed and/or deadly. The girls not only show emotional/behavioral signs, but they also show physical signs as well. This virus causes flare-ups in which the virus causes more harm with each new one in every girl. Some can fight through, changed physically, mentally, and emotionally in strange, horrific ways while others simply can’t house the virus, their bodies unable to stand against the hostile takeover.
The plot was intriguing and captured my attention immediately. I had the misconception going in that we’d see the buildup to the virus and then the world after, but in Wilder Girlsthat’s not the case. We get bits and pieces from the world before the tox virus throughout the book, and I really wanted more of this aspect. Though, getting Hetty’s thoughts on the “before” seemed haunting in a way. I desperately wanted to know more about this strange virus. I felt as the book progressed, we saw more of the virus as the characters did and found out bits and pieces on the whys and how’s of it, but we never get a definitive answer. It seems as if the author set the ending up for a continuation which I really hope is the case, but I’m was left with more questions than answers. There is so much Power could do with this storyline and so many avenues she could extend upon and like I said, I really hope this is the case. There is a touch of romance between two of the main characters that could potentially become more and of course, the virus is still kind of a mystery even at the end. Overall, I liked the story, but I hope with all hope that Power is given the opportunity to give us more because Wilder Girls has the ability to become something phenomenal, especially in our current era.
**thank you so much to Penguin Random House, Delacorte Press, Rory Power, and Bookish First for the free copy. The views and opinions I have expressed here are solely my own and are in no way a representation of the author, publisher, and/or distributor.**
“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.”
The characters were easy to connect with and each brought a new way of looking at this world filled with the virus named “Tox.” Each girl is affected differently but it always yields the same results in the end: death. Hetty, and every other girl, has been in survival mode for almost two years and have been completely abandoned by the outside world due to needing to be quarantined. The tox virus seems to have only affected the school and the surrounding island that it lays on. Everything from the ground to the animals are affected in some way and have become crazed and/or deadly. The girls not only show emotional/behavioral signs, but they also show physical signs as well. This virus causes flare-ups in which the virus causes more harm with each new one in every girl. Some can fight through, changed physically, mentally, and emotionally in strange, horrific ways while others simply can’t house the virus, their bodies unable to stand against the hostile takeover.
The plot was intriguing and captured my attention immediately. I had the misconception going in that we’d see the buildup to the virus and then the world after, but in Wilder Girlsthat’s not the case. We get bits and pieces from the world before the tox virus throughout the book, and I really wanted more of this aspect. Though, getting Hetty’s thoughts on the “before” seemed haunting in a way. I desperately wanted to know more about this strange virus. I felt as the book progressed, we saw more of the virus as the characters did and found out bits and pieces on the whys and how’s of it, but we never get a definitive answer. It seems as if the author set the ending up for a continuation which I really hope is the case, but I’m was left with more questions than answers. There is so much Power could do with this storyline and so many avenues she could extend upon and like I said, I really hope this is the case. There is a touch of romance between two of the main characters that could potentially become more and of course, the virus is still kind of a mystery even at the end. Overall, I liked the story, but I hope with all hope that Power is given the opportunity to give us more because Wilder Girls has the ability to become something phenomenal, especially in our current era.
**thank you so much to Penguin Random House, Delacorte Press, Rory Power, and Bookish First for the free copy. The views and opinions I have expressed here are solely my own and are in no way a representation of the author, publisher, and/or distributor.**