Wilder Girls by Rory Power

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There are very few times that I’m sad that I read this in an electronic version, and it’s usually when there are photos involved, since my Kindle Paperwhite is crappy at reproducing images. But this time it’s because I absolutely love this cover, and I wish I could have stared at it every time I picked up my book, instead of my overly familiar Kindle case. The artist for this cover absolutely outdid themself, and I love it so very much.

I’m a huge fan of dystopian novels, although with the threat of COVID-19 creeping ever closer to me, it was a bit unsettling to read about a plague of sorts called the Tox that kept killing off or causing deformities in these girls stuck on an island in Maine. I really enjoyed the references back to the Navy, having myself been born in Norfolk as a Navy brat and then marrying my sailor husband twenty years ago.

There are quite a few twists and turns that I did not expect. View Spoiler » The one that surprised me most was when Hetty realized that Welch was disposing of supplies not because of some BS excuse about preservatives wreaking havoc on the girls’ compromised immune system but because the Navy and the CDC were using the food to experiment on these girls. « Hide Spoiler Power really keeps the reader on the edge of her seat, wondering what’s going to come next, or what kind of deformity the Tox is going to create in its next victim.

But the end. I respect an author’s decision to leave a book on a cliffhanger because they’re setting up for the next novel, but this wasn’t anything like a mostly resolved ending with a bit of a cliffhanger. This straight up *ended* with no resolution of any kind. My Kindle formatted the last page to the very last line on the “page,” so when I turned the page, the next thing I saw was “Acknowledgements” instead of more of the story. I flipped back and forth several times to make sure there was nothing more, and felt very disappointed for it.

As a result, I feel I cannot give this more than 3 stars, even though I did enjoy the rest of the novel. I really hope Power is busy giving us a book two so we can get some closure with this story.