Blogtober Book Review: Wilder Girls by Rory Power

GoodReads Summary:
It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there’s more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.
Review:
Wilder Girls is what the people of Twitter chose for me to read for Friday the 13th. It was not as spooky as I might have wanted, but it certainly was horrifying. All of the effects of the Tox were gross and creepy, the body modifications (for lack of a better word) were equally interesting and disgusting.
Hetty was a character that’s hard to explain. She has her people, Reese and Byatt. The three stick together, right up until Hetty gets chosen to be one of the Boat Girls and things start to change. She learns secrets she never wanted to know and it mostly just goes downhill from there.
Byatt was mysterious. I wanted to know more about her. I wanted her history and her feelings before she goes missing. She was intriguing, probably because we didn’t get to learn all that much about her.
Then there’s Reese. Also mysterious, but in a much more intimidating way. We learn a bit more about her than the other characters because she’s actually from the island. She’s queer and struggles a bit with what seems to be jealousy of Hetty’s relationship with Byatt. I liked seeing Hetty and Reese’s relationship expand after Byatt went missing.
Overall, I would have liked a little bit more character development. I wanted to know more about these girls. I just all around wanted more. I wanted to know what happened to them in the end, what happened to the rest of the girls on the island, how did the Navy know that quarantine was broken, I was just left with so many questions. If you’re looking for a horror story, that’s light on the horror (except for the horrifying things the Tox does to these girls) this is the story for you.

Keep on reading lovelies, Amanda.