I’m way behind on my reviews and this book wasn’t terribly memorable so please bear with me while I try to weasel 250 words out of it. Wilder Girls has an absolutely gorgeous cover but if you try to judge the book by it, prepare to be woefully disappointed. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just blah.
Mercifully free of flashbacks, this book takes place at a girls’ boarding school on an island off the coast of Maine (I think, I’m pretty sure it’s Maine). A virus has ravaged the entire island and while they fight the sickness within themselves, the girls also have to combat mutated predators and generally survive against the odds in an increasingly harsh world.
It’s a bit of a coming of age book – our main characters are in their mid-teens, our primary narrator juggling her life between her best friend and her first crush – and the author has essentially replaced getting your first period with the arrival of symptoms from the virus, so it kind of plays to expectations. There is some mystery about their world on the island versus what’s happening in the broader outside world. The best friend is taken away by scientists for testing and our narrator fights to bring her back, and that’s really our big plot driver. Another reviewer picked out a moment that I agree really works – the narrator has to make a brutal decision and the character most affected understands that it had to happen, but also explains that she’s allowed to be hurt by it.
Still, unfortunately, a mostly forgettable book. Maybe I should have written the review sooner.