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Wilder Girls
Book Review
The characters are strong-willed, unapologetic, complex and unforgettable young women
Wilder Girls was a strange book to read this year because it’s set during a pandemic. The Tox started 18 months ago, and it never got better. Hetty and her friends are too afraid to leave Raxter Girls School for fear of what the Tox has done to the world. When Hetty’s best friend Byatt goes missing, she’s ready to do anything to find her, even if that means breaking quarantine. Little does she know that this will lead to her discovering more about her world than she ever thought possible.
Wilder Girls isn’t a book for the faint-hearted, it’s very gory in some parts and features a lot of death, and the girls still left at Raxter have gruesome deformities. The characters are strong-willed, unapologetic, complex and unforgettable young women.
My favourite part of the book was its use of language. It was so poetic and descriptive that it really elevated the story. The only thing I wasn’t satisfied with was the ending, I didn’t know what to do with it, or what to assume. I understand why the author chose to finish the book like this and why it would satisfy some readers, however I think there was some wasted potential.
This book felt comparable Lord of The Flies, but is still original. I would recommend it to older readers who are looking for something new.
However, I don’t think its suitable to anyone under the age of 14 as its content is very mature.
About the Book
The US blockbuster debut novel for YA readers that was on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks is now available in the UK. This book is thrilling horror story set in a girls boarding school during a fictitious pandemic and not one to be recommended to the faint-hearted! Everyone loses something to the Tox; Hetty lost her eye, Reese’s hand has changed, and Byatt just disappeared completely.
It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put in quarantine. The Tox turned the students strange and savage, the teachers died off one by one. Cut off from the mainland, the girls don’t dare wander past the school’s fence where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure as the Tox takes; their bodies becoming sick and foreign, things bursting out of them, bits missing.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her best friend, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie in the wilderness past the fence. As she digs deeper, she learns disturbing truths about her school and what else is living on Raxter Island. And that the cure might not be a cure at all . . .
Author
Rory Power
Rory Power is an American author best known for her speculative-fiction novels aimed at teens and young adults. She made a major splash with her debut novel Wilder Girls (2019), which became a New York Times bestseller, and has since published other acclaimed YA works including Burn Our Bodies Down (2020) and, most recently, Kill Creatures (2025).
Reviewer Profile
Martha, 14
- Reviews: 5
- Likes: Mamma Mia, running and reading
- Dislikes: physics and tomatoes
- Favourite Book: A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
- Favourite Song: Something Great by One Direction
- Favourite Film: Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!
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