Trigger warnings: This book features various forms of body horror and disfigurations. There are also scenes of death/murder.
Synopsis: 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: I think Wilder Girls suffered from no one really being able to describe this book properly. When ARCs were being read, people said it was a kind of survival story and the main characters had physical disfigurations and powers(?), but very little of that actually ended up being true. First, let's talk about characters. I liked Hetty overall. She's definitely an example of someone who has physical impairments (she only has one usable eye) but she doesn't let that slow her down. She's smart and passionate which I can appreciate, and the story is told mostly in her POV which is fine. But we got weird segments that were from Byatt's point of view and none of these felt relevant to me. It seemed like they were there to make the world seem darker, but I just wished they weren't a part of the story.
Like I said, people were referring to this as a survival story. It isn't. It really isn't. The entire story is set within the walls of Raxter with the exception of a few scenes where Hetty goes past the school's gate. Even then, she comes back so there isn't much in the way of "survival." We do see how a school is set up with limited resources, but that's really as far as survival elements go. The characters having disfigurations will probably be hit or miss for a lot of people. Some will love the representation in Wilder Girls. Others will hate it. I wasn't terribly fond of it, personally. I just don't like the idea of physical differences between people making them "grotesque." I might try other body horror themed books and see if I can like this idea, but this might just be something I never jive with. It was also weird hearing them talk about flare ups in regards to the Tox, and for Hetty to wonder if girls were going to die from it. As someone with chronic migraines, that rubbed me the wrong way. Again, some people will probably be fine with this. I just wasn't.
The other reason why people were praising this book was because of queer representation, but even that wasn't done well. Hetty and Byatt had some weird relationship that was physical because they often slept together and cuddled, but that wasn't the couple to get together in the story. Wilder Girls isn't the only one that does this. I'll never understand situations where best friends get intimate the way Hetty and Byatt did. I've been close with males and females, and I've shared beds with both of them, but never that physically close to where we were touching. That just feels weird to me. Then Hetty ends up sort of forming a romantic relationship with Reese. Reese is meant to be a stand-offish character but, again, I didn't understand her relationship with Hetty. I just didn't see the chemistry there, and I'm one of those people who would usually resonate with characters like Reese. Still, if I like someone, I'm not going to be a bitch to them. And I didn't seen enough warmness from Reese to genuinely believe she felt anything for Hetty.
There is a part of the story where Byatt goes missing, and Hetty wants to find her. I think that was supposed to make the story more compelling, but it didn't. If anything, it made the story worse because most of Hetty's thoughts were about finding Byatt. It just became all-consuming, and not fun to read. I thought this was going to be where the survival element was going to take place, but it still wasn't really a thing. Then the book just ends, and I felt like there was so much more story to tell.
Wilder Girls had an interesting concept, but it ended up being boring and it felt largely unfinished.
2 howls
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