BOOK REVIEW | Wilder Girls - Rory Power
Once upon a time I was in this nice little town called Toronto, in a very charming and teeny tiny little bookshop called Indigo. All was quaint and cute and tiny, except... It was absolutely massive, and boy, was it glorious!
I don't know how familiar you guys are with Indigo bookshops, but I hadn't heard of it before. The first time I visited one, which was in the Eaton Centre in Toronto this past summer, I spent two whole hours in there! There are just so many beautiful covers to admire and blurbs to read...
One that immediately caught my eye was the cover of Wilder Girls by Rory Power. I believe the book was a recommended read and I was indeed too intrigued to not pick it up.
Wilder Girls tells the story of how a mysterious disease called the Tox has taken over Raxter Island, and with it, the Raxter School for Girls. The Island, just off the coast of Maine, has slowly been taken over by a weird and gory disease. It's been eighteen months since the girls were first quarantined, and ever since they have desperately tried to survive whilst waiting for the promised cure. A difficult task seeing that the Tox has no mercy and takes quite a few lives.
The reader follows sixteen-year-old scholarship student Hetty, who was one of the first girls to show any signs of the gruesome disease, and her closest friends Byatt and Reese. When Byatt goes missing after being taken to the infirmary when having a flare-up, Hetty is determined to find her again and won't stop until she does.
The book offers a modern day queer and feminist take on the classic Lord of the Flies. Several of the main characters are queer and only two men make an appearance throughout the entire book. Power's writing is captivating from the beginning and has a nice flow to it. The dystopian concept of an island ridden with disease is very compelling, but was, in my opinion, not everything it could have been.
Despite the many positive aspects of Wilder Girls, for example the queer and feminist context (for which I applaud the author), there were also some negatives. Take for instance the lack of character development. The characters are shallow, which results in an absence of empathy from the reader. Hetty's word alone should convince you that she has an extremely loving and close relationship with Byatt, when in reality, not much of that love seeps through. The relationship between Hetty and Reese seems to develop into a romantic one, but falls flat way too early. I would have loved to read about a romance blossoming.
The ending of the book came across as plain weird. It is very abrupt and left me with many unanswered questions. Is Byatt okay? Will Hetty be okay? I couldn't help but feel like the story is not over yet. Maybe it isn't? Maybe Power will write a sequel in which there is more love and romance and all the good stuff? We shall see.
About Rory Power
Rory Power obtained a Masters in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia and is currently working as a young adult author, crime fiction editor and story consultant for TV adaptation. Wilder Girls is her debut and will be followed by Burn Our Bodies Down, which is set to be released in summer 2020.