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 . . .
I read Wilder Girls fast, it is immediately involving, visceral and occasionally horrific but highly engaging and a really clever central premise.
A group of girls and their teachers are quarantined away- the Tox changes them in increasingly nasty ways- sometimes they disappear for treatment never to return. Meanwhile out in the woods and the surrounding area something stirs…
This is a brilliant YA horror tale, a boarding school story on acid…The characters pop (sometimes literally) and Rory Power writes with a vividly immersive prose and creates a group dynamic you really care about. The story twists and turns towards an emotionally reaching conclusion.
Overall a really great read. Recommended.
You can purchase Wilder Girls (Macmillan) Here.
Happy Reading!
