Wilder Girls

 Power, Rory. Wilder Girls. 2019. 357p. ISBN 9780525645580. Available at FIC POW on the library shelves.

Eighteen months ago, a strange sickness afflicted the girls and the staff of the Raxter School for Girls, a private school located on an island off the coast of Maine near Portland. The school was immediately put into quarantine while the Centers for Disease Control conducted research, trying to figure out what was wrong with the school's inhabitants. One teacher died, then another. The more of them did. Students also started dying. All of them suffered strange and often horrific deformations, such as a second spine growing, an eye bursting out, or plants growing inside bodies. Nature itself was also affected, with strange and vicious animals replacing the original flora and fauna.

For eighteen months, Hetty has lived with the Tox, the disease that affects them all. The school population has dwindled, and no one seems eager to rescue them from their plight. Now that only the headmistress and a younger teacher have survived, the girls are more or less on their own. As one of the oldest students there, Hetty and her best friend Byatt are trying to survive. Reese, the daughter of the school's custodian, completes this unlikely trio. The school has retrenched behind its iron fence, protected from the rogue animals on the other side. Girls are positioned on the roof with a gun to shoot those animals. And there's never enough food. The U.S. Navy sends a supply ship, but it seems to never have enough food. 

When Byatt goes through a Tox phase and disappears, Hetty enlists Reese in finding her friend. Their relationship was already rocky, but now this quest to find Byatt will reveal their true nature, as well as break the quarantine the island has maintained for so long. As they search, Hetty and Reese will discover secrets they weren't meant to have, while Byatt attempts to find out what happened to her.

Told from the alternating perspectives of Hettie and Byatt, Wilder Girls is similar to Lord of the Flies, but with an all female cast. Survival, betrayal, love, and sorrow percolate through the book, creating a satisfactory story. Fans of dystopia will appreciate the reality that guide the girls' actions.