Wilder Girls by Rory Power

My Goodreads rating: 3/5 stars

In this debut novel by Rory Power, a strange virus called the Tox has taken over Raxter School for Girls, mutilating their bodies in terrifying ways that would give even Stephen King the creeps. The girls are assured a cure as long as they wait patiently and don't break quarantine. But then Hetty's best friend, Byatt, disappears, and Hetty will do anything to find her.

Wilder Girls is actually a feminist take on Lord of the Flies, but I've never read that book, so I didn't even realize that until I'd finished it. Because I've never read Lord of the Flies, I can't really talk about the similarities or differences, but I can still talk about Wilder Girls.

So, I didn't really enjoy this book that much. However, I thought it was really interesting and original, despite it being based on another book. I wasn't a very big fan of the writing style. It was written in a lot of sentence fragments, and there were lots of comma splices. It made the mood pretty intense, and, yeah, I just felt really tense throughout the whole read. Being the grammar policewoman I am, the fragments and splices really bothered me for about the first quarter or so of the book; I think had it been written using more proper grammar, I would have enjoyed it more, but it also would've lost some of its personality.

The characters in this story were pretty cool. The Tox did something different to all of them, and all the characters had different strengths and weaknesses, physically and mentally. I was surprised at what lengths they all went to just to stay alive, It was insane and oftentimes inhumane. Overall, I thought this book was okay; it wasn't really my style, but it was also unique to anything else I've read, and it held my attention whole way through.