Wilder Girls - They told us to wait and stay alive

 

Book review by Laura, 17 years old

The novel „Wilder Girls – They told us to wait and stay alive“ written by Rory Power and published with Delacorte Press is about the outbreak of a life-threatening virus at an island boarding school for girls only.

 

The story starts one and a half years after the outbreak, when the girls are put in quarantine on the school grounds with only the headmistress and Miss Welch left from all of the teachers. They are all infected, but the virus shows differently on every girl. It alters their appearance, they evolve scales, glowing skin and a second heart among other abnormalities. Every season the girls live through “flare-ups” of the virus hitting them worse every time. For Byatt that meant screaming at an intonation that made your bones crack whenever she was trying to speak. Bad cases like her are handled in the infirmary on the upper floors, where "the doors are locked from the outside". Most of the girls die once they had to be brought up there. Byatts best friends Hetty and Reese are scared about their friend and when Hetty breaks into the infirmary to look for Byatt she discovers something that leads her to doubt everything they had been told about the virus as well as the quarantine. When Hetty gets assigned boat shift and leaves school grounds to gather food she unwillingly becomes part of the whole lying machinery. To protect their friend but also to seek the truth, Hetty and Reese break quarantine and within a week lose every sense of security they’ve ever had. Will they be able to save Byatt? Can they get off the island and even cure the virus? Or did they sign not only their own but the death sentence of all the girls left?

 

I really liked the way the novel was written, even if the story didn’t made sense to it all in the end, I could feel myself vanish from the real world whilst reading. Especially for her first book, Power has written an extremely strong story in terms of the characters feelings, motives and behavior. The plot was off to a great start with all the different characters and the “What-happened-before” explained within the first “day” we experience in Hetty’s life. It stays strong up until approximately half of the book, when the story sometimes contradicts itself and leaves loose ends to side stories that just don’t add up. The tension rises until the very end and even if I can understand how the story is supposed to come to this “kind-of-open-end-but-this-story-could-also-continue” it didn’t feel like a worthy ending for the story witnessed. I still liked the book a lot, because it made the reader emphasize with the characters very much, especially the feeling of being not completely clear in your mind whilst you are trying to memorize information that could safe your life. Also, I liked that it wasn’t a super linear story with all hints leading up to the one and only solution that solves every mystery but a story that relates to reality as it’s being messy about the hints of truth it gives you and not everything happening the way you think it will. I give the book 4 out of 5 possible stars.

Wilder Girls - They told us to wait and stay alive

by Rory Power

at Delacorte Press

ISBN: 978-0-593-11848-1