Wilder Girls by Rory Power
"It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true."
“We don't get to choose what hurts us”
― Rory Power, Wilder Girls
This one was such a strange and amazing read! I was warned there would be gore, and there definitely was, but it never seemed excessive or unnecessary. I loved the friendships in this story and the importance of chosen family. And how much more important those friendships are when the institutions set up to protect you, end up utterly failing you.
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I was so intrigued from the get-go with this one. And they layering of little hints at a time, explaining what happened at Raxter was so well done. The ending was the only reason I rated it 3 instead of 4. I really wanted more. And I don’t know where the characters go at the end of the book. Basically I just wanted to know more!
Genre: ya, horror, mystery, lgbtqia+
Representation: lesbian/queer
Content Warnings: Graphic violence and body horror, Gore, On the page character death, parental death, animal death (the animals are not pets), Behavior and descriptive language akin to self-harm, references to self-harm, Food scarcity, starvation, A scene depicting chemical gassing, Suicide and suicidal ideation, Non-consensual medical treatment