Wilder Girls

May 15, 2019
When the institutions you trust fail you, what will you do--and how will you handle the consequences? Two girls grapple with these questions in this gritty, lush debut chronicling psychological and environmental tipping points at a boarding school for girls on a remote island in the near future. Sixteen-year-old scholarship student Hetty was one of the first to show signs of the Tox. Over the last 18 months, she's watched it ravage her classmates and teachers as they wait, quarantined within school grounds, for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop and deliver a cure. The Tox affects everyone differently: Hetty's right eye sealed itself shut; her best friend, Byatt, grew a second, exterior spine; Reese has a sharp, silver-scaled left hand and glowing hair. Not everyone adapts to the Tox's cyclical flare-ups--a girl brought to the infirmary rarely returns. The two remaining staff maintain tenuous order, but a flare-up that lands Byatt in the infirmary--with Hetty determined to protect her--quickly escalates into events that irrevocably shape the fates of everyone left on the island. Power deftly weaves a chilling narrative that disrupts readers' expectations through an expertly crafted, slow-burn reveal of the deadly consequences of climate change. Most characters are assumed white; Julia is brown-skinned and Cat is cued as Chinese-American. Several significant characters, including Hetty, are queer. Part survival thriller, part post-apocalyptic romance, and part ecocritical feminist manifesto, a staggering gut punch of a book. (Dystopian. 12-18)

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May 10, 2019

Gr 10 Up-In the 18 months since the mysterious Tox began infecting students and teachers at the Raxter School for Girls, nearly half of the school's population has died or become physically disfigured. With their island campus placed under quarantine by the Navy and the CDC, the remaining girls have become inured to the disease's horrific physical manifestations and accepting of each other's open sores, webbed fingers, and bizarre mutations such as second spines and silver scales. Within this claustrophobic environment, dutiful scholarship student Hetty leaps at the chance to join the Boat Shift, an elite group of older students permitted to leave the school grounds to collect secret deliveries of government supplies. But Hetty soon discovers that in addition to the Tox, Raxter faces sinister threats from within its own ranks. When her best friend Byatt disappears, Hetty vows to stop at nothing to find her, even in the face of ever greater danger and violence from the very people who are supposed to protect her. While the novel's first half is full of careful world-building and character development, the second half veers sharply into action-packed thrills (and a bit of queer romance), and the dissonance in style is somewhat jarring. Nevertheless, Power's debut remains a quick and engaging read, with a deliberately ambiguous ending that opens the door for a sequel. Due to extensive graphic violence, including suicide and self-mutilation, this title is best suited for mature teen readers. VERDICT Dark, surreal, and intense, this feminist-themed title will appeal to fans of science fiction, speculative fiction, and horror; recommended for all libraries serving teens.-Kelsy Peterson, Forest Hill Coll., Melbourne, Australia

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 5, 2019
Electric prose, compelling relationships, and visceral horror illuminate Power’s incisive debut about a group of young women under quarantine. A year and a half earlier, the Tox spread through Raxter Island off the coast of Maine, corrupting its inhabitants—flora and fauna alike. At the Raxter School for Girls, the Tox continues to mutate the students in cyclical flare-ups and has killed all the teachers but two. Now, the remaining girls, including friends Hetty, Byatt, and Reese, 16, survive on meager rations, adapt to alarming physical changes, and wait in radio silence for a promised cure. When Hetty is selected for Boat Shift, the only chance to venture beyond the school’s fences, she is exposed to secrets that tug at the seams of her understanding. And after Byatt disappears, Hetty sets into motion a series of events that will rend Raxter’s careful framework from its bones. Abrupt perspective shifts sometimes disrupt the action, and the finer details of the Tox are left a bit vague even as graphic violence permeates the fast-paced story. Still, the tale’s environmental and feminist themes are resonant, particularly the immeasurable costs of experimentation on female bodies, and the power of female solidarity and resilience amid ecological and political turmoil. Ages 14–up. Agent: Daisy Parente, Lutyens & Rubinstein.

Starred review from May 1, 2019
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* It's been a year and a half since the Raxter School for Girls was ravaged by the Tox, a sickness that crept in slowly through the woods before distorting the bodies of the teachers and students in vicious ways, leaving them wilted and blackened when it was finished. Left with the promise of a cure, the quarantined girls watch out for one another. That's precisely what Hetty is doing when her friend Byatt disappears, and together with her friend Reese, she breaks quarantine to penetrate the wild beyond the fence to find her. At the same time, they navigate their fragile, maybe even brittle, relationship that's strained by the complicated, desolate circumstances. Power's mesmerizing novel is touched with eerie moments of body horror?a stitched-up eye with something lurking underneath, a second protruding spine, animals growing three times their size. Those moments pale in comparison to the savagery of the Tox, however: "It made them stick each other in the main hall during dinner, made them watch themselves bleed dry." Although the glimmer of a tangled backstory and foreshadowing device are left tantalizingly dangling, Hetty's fierce loyalty drives the story forward, and the alternating points of view between Hetty and Byatt reveal a rich, dynamic picture of the realities of living on Raxter Island. Power's evocative, haunting, and occasionally gruesome debut will challenge readers to ignore its bewitching presence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)