Description

An instant New York Times bestseller, Wilder Girls is Rory Power’s chilling and unputdownable YA debut. The Power meets We Were Liars in this compelling story of survival and the power of female friendships, perfect for fans of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

‘Body horror meets boarding school in a moving, terrifying thriller’ – Guardian

Everyone loses something to the Tox; Hetty lost her eye, Reese’s hand has changed, and Byatt just disappeared completely.

It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put in quarantine. The Tox turned the students strange and savage, the teachers died off one by one. Cut off from the mainland, the girls don’t dare wander past the school’s fence where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure as the Tox takes; their bodies becoming sick and foreign, things bursting out of them, bits missing.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her best friend, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie in the wilderness past the fence. As she digs deeper, she learns disturbing truths about her school and what else is living on Raxter Island. And that the cure might not be a cure at all . . .

‘Your new favourite book’ – Cosmopolitan

‘Wholly original and compelling’ – Observer

‘A staggering gut punch of a book’ – Kirkus

Publisher Review

A very different boarding school tale * i News * A feminist, LGBT+, sci-fi-horror story with all the tantalizing elements of gore, mystery, war, and love you can ask for. Real, flawed, brave girls against a world gone mad. A shudderingly good read! -- Dawn Kurtagich, author of Teeth in the Mist The perfect kind of story for our current era * Hypable * Wilder Girls is so sharp and packs so much emotion in such wise ways. I'm convinced we're about to witness the emergence of a major new literary star. -- Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation Wilder Girls is the bold, imaginative, emotionally wrenching horror novel of my dreams - one that celebrates the resilience of girls and the earthshaking power of their friendships. An eerie, unforgettable triumph. -- Claire Legrand, New York Times bestselling author of Furyborn Power's evocative, haunting, and occasionally gruesome debut will challenge readers to ignore its bewitching presence. * Booklist, Starred Review * This gritty, lush debut chronicling psychological and environmental tipping points . . . weaves a chilling narrative that disrupts readers' expectations through an expertly crafted, slow-burn reveal of the deadly consequences of climate change . . . Part survival thriller, part post-apocalyptic romance, and part ecocritical feminist manifesto, a staggering gut punch of a book. * Kirkus, Starred Review * Body horror meets boarding school in a moving, terrifying thriller * Guardian * Groundbreaking . . . brutal and beautiful, raw and unflinching. -- Emily Suvada, author of This Mortal Coil This thrilling saga . . . is sure to be one of the season's most talked-about books, in any genre. * Entertainment Weekly * Finally, Rory Power combines the challenges of dystopian survival with the dynamics of boarding school life in the wholly original and compelling Wilder Girls. It is 18 months since Raxter school for girls was quarantined following the outbreak of a deadly virus that kills adults and turns girls' bodies strange and foreign. Both their remote island setting and the girls themselves become ever more wild and dangerous as they await the promised cure. Power's dark, lyrical tale challenges expectations at every turn; a paean to the power of female friendships. -- Fiona Noble * Observer * Your new favourite book. * Cosmopolitan *