The Wilder Girls

By Rory Power

☕︎☕︎☕︎

I picked this up immediately after reading The Grace Year, and I'd tell you to read them the other way around. This one is stranger, meaner, and considerably more disgusting. I say that with high praise.

Raxter School for Girls sits on an island off the coast of Maine. Eighteen months ago, the Tox arrived and the gates closed. In a mini-closed off epidemic, the Tox kills some girls outright and reshapes the rest. Girls lose eyes, some grow extra bones, and others end up scaled.  The woods surrounding the school was subject to the same rot.

Every girl in this book wakes up in a body that has done something without their permission,  publicly, in front of everyone, on no schedule she was consulted about. It hurts, it's humiliating, it's permanent. The adults respond by telling her to wait quietly and not make it worse. I don't think I've read a more accurate description of being thirteen. Power gets there by covering it in scales and pus rather than softening this coming-of-age novel.

This was a really fun quick read.