Laura (crofteereader)'s Reviews > The Wilderness of Girls

What a messy, complicated, heartbreaking, fascinating story. At first, things felt unbalanced with the four “wild” girls and the one “normal” one, all dealing with their trauma in a messy spaghetti pile of pain and hope and anger and grief. I still think I would have liked a lot more from Grace and Rhi in the middle when the tangled whirlwind of the wild girls’ thoughts felt so overwhelming, but that too felt like a metaphor. And when we finally cracked Rhi open, spreading apart her ribs to see all the messy, scarred insides, I think Grace was the perfect one to witness.

This book is a heavy one, and there’s a good list of content warnings provided by the author at the beginning of the book.

Part of me really liked that we didn’t get all of the answers, and part of me wanted more. Because in the real world we very rarely get an answer for everything, but fiction has the freedom to be so much neater. Kinda wish we got to know which of the girls was writing the memoir we got excerpts from throughout, though; I think I have an idea, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Overall, a very solid offering with a lot to think about (and mourn)

{Thank to Dreamscape Select for the ALC and Zando Young Readers for the DRC in exchange for my honest review}