Book Review
Book: Wilder Girls
Author: Rory Power
Genre: Dystopia; Mystery; YA fiction
Ranking: 4.5 stars
“It’s like that, with all of us here. Sick, strange, and we don’t know why. Things bursting out of us, bits missing and pieces sloughing off, and then we harden and smooth over.”
The main reason I picked up this book was the cover. I’m a sucker for weird yet beautiful covers and this cover literally left me drooling over it. They say, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Well, yeah I agree. But, I guess, sometimes you can. I don’t regret my decision of going for this book for millisecond. I finished this book in almost 3 days which is great considering I’m a slow reader. I totally devoured this book. It was like I was captured in its trance for several days after finishing it.
Wilder Girls by Rory Power is one of the creepy nail-biting stories I’ve ever read. It is like my worst nightmares come true kind of story. It revolves around a school at island a few miles away from Maine. The school was once fully functioning but now it is under attack of a mysterious disease known as Tox. Living under the effects of Tox that has almost wiped out more than half of school population, only two teachers and a few girls have managed to keep surviving with the horrible consequences of the affliction. The island was immediately quarantined by navy and the survivors were promised for a cure as soon as possible. They were also given supplies and other important things which were barely enough to keep them alive. The supplies were dropped off at the coast and only a few selected girls (boat shift girls) with Ms Welch (one of the two remaining teachers) were allowed to go out there and carry all the supplies to school. As I mentioned earlier, the supplies contained everything but enough food. Girls are always starving never having enough to eat. They just used to keep wandering inside the school and waiting for the next flare-up. Every once in a while the girls have flare-ups and some of those outbreaks were too intense to survive. But if any one does survive, the physical signs never stopped showing on their body.
Tox was not their only problem; they had to protect themselves from wild animals that have grown more dangerous after Tox. Tox was not only affecting humans but it was slowly and gradually taking every living thing on island in its grip. Every plant, vines, trees, animals were showing horrible signs of this mysterious affliction. Though the school built high fence to stop wild animals from entering inside, they also train girls to shoot in case a wild bear manages to break the fence and put their life at stake. Do they get the cure? Do they finally discover what this mysterious Tox is? What happens if they break the quarantine? What if navy abandon them? Would they survive if a bear breaks the fence?
I loved everything about this book. The characterization, a bit of a switch in point of views, continuous tension building, you would feel like almost every chapter ends with cliffhanger. Even the plot of this book is perfect. But then you would think why I gave it 4.5 stars if everything was perfect. It is because of the confused ending. Some may find the ending perfect but not me. There is no way this book left us hanging in the air. There has to be a sequel coming up. Also I felt like all the questions I had about the disease were not answered. I still have a few confusing queries about the Tox which I kept waiting to get the answers of. Well, apart from this tiny flaw, this was a perfect story. Highly recommended!
Commenti