A review by ameliainthelibrary
Wilder Girls by Rory Power

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

First and foremost if you read no other part of this review read this: this books is neither a ‘feminist Lord of the Flies’ or a work of queer fiction as it advertises itself to be, I wanted to like this book so much. And I’ll give Powers this, she writes well. The language used was beautiful and flowed well even when describing body horror. The body horror was deserved and added to the plot of the story in a meaningful way and didn’t feel shoehorned in for shock value. I enjoyed how the characters were written and developed and found Hetty to be incredibly believable in the extreme setting of the books. Other than that I hated it. At best the queer representation that has landed this book on so many LGBTQ+ recs lists is at best queer bating. A kiss and then the two characters not interacting again until the final scene. (I know we’re desperate for whatever we can get but we deserve better than this.) I have no idea how to discuss the pacing except to say that it was as if Powers remembered half way through that she needed a plot, hyper fixated on it for a few chapters really giving it her all, then got bored and just tried to throw a bow on it. I was able to guess the nature of the disease in the first hundred pages and when I had my suspicions confirmed I just ended up disappointed more than anything. I don’t agree with the people who lived being brought back to life, largely due to the fact that it’s never shown if the knowledge them being alive brought had any impact on the ending. We were given numerous false starts that played back to nothing. Was the worm the true villain? Is it connected to the heart? The papers found in the office? You’re guess is as good as mine because Powers seems to have forgotten about them. We’re lucky she didn’t forget to throw in the rushed paragraph on the second to last page ‘explaining’ the events of the entire novel. The premise is there and Powers is clearly a talented enough writer to really have done something with it but she just repeatedly failed in my eyes. 2/5⭐️