Wilder Girls by Rory Power (Delacorte Press, 2019)

★★☆☆☆

Sapphic horror continues, but this one missed me.

Things I thought were scary or good:

Not being able to trust an authority figure(s).
I appreciated that Hetty, Byatt, and Reese’s relationships were messy, and somewhere between friends-sisters-lovers.
The girls’ (and particularly Byatt’s) relationship with the Tox: that despite the Tox being horrifying, it might be something you want, or something that makes you truer to yourself. The metaphor for queerness.

Things I was bored by:

Infected animals.
Body horror so unrealistic as to feel random.
Sentences missing punctuation for effect
I never cared about any of the other students or the nameless Headmistress, so emotional moments that hinged on those characters’ motivations didn’t connect.
And honestly, I didn’t really care about the main characters either.

I think I need a break from YA.