RECKLESS GIRLS by Rachel Hawkins
- Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, January 4th 2022
- Genre: Thriller
- Format: eARC
- Page Count: 320 pages
- My Rating: ★★★ (3/5)
Click on the cover for my review on Goodreads.
MCs : cishet white woman (*4)+ cishet white man (*2) POV : single 1st-person (present) + multiple 3rd-person (past) location: Hawai‘i, USA + Meroe Island (fictional) indie? : no
I read Hawkins’ The Wife Upstairs (my review) this time last year and couldn’t put it down. With Reckless Girls, I had a similar experience of wanting to keep reading to find out what’s going on, but unfortunately, the final reveal also happened to be a huge, unexplained plot hole that just made the whole build-up fell flat.
Lux (25) has been stuck in life after her mother passed away from cancer. When she followed her boyfriend Nico (26) to Hawaii, she was hoping for some travel adventures but ended up working at hotels instead. Then Brittany (22?) and Amma (22?) showed up, wanting to hire Nico to take them to Meroe Island, a secluded atoll famous for cannibalism legends in WWII. Soon, Lux finds herself heading for the island with Nico, Brittany, and Amma, but they aren’t the only one there. Rich boy Jake (30) and his girlfriend Eliza (30) are also on the island. As the days go by, terrible things start happening, and Lux begins to see that this was not a friendly trip after all.
I really liked what the author was trying to do in this book. Many of the characters are victims of rich white boys who never got the punishment they deserved, so the reckless girls have to do something. Thematically, it was similar with The Wife Upstairs, but execution-wise, there was something left to be desired—believability. I’m not saying that every book needs to be super believable, but I was waiting for a clever and shocking reveal toward the end of the book and got a plot hole (and a rather cop-out solution) instead. How could one of the characters never realize it? If they did, why would they not say anything?
Anyway, I did enjoy how Lux built a friendship with all the other five people on the island and subsequently experiencing everything falling apart. I wasn’t entirely sure what role the rando (there was a weird guy showing up in the middle of the story) was supposed to play and what would have happened had he not show up. The interwoven timeline in Lux’s first-person POV and flashbacks of Lux’s, Amma’s, Brittany’s, and Eliza’s kept me guessing, and yes, Reckless Girls was such a page turner!
The suspense of the story was great (love me some shitty characters), but the final reveal was not. I’m rating it 3 stars for the enjoyment I got throughout the read and not for the mystery plot that ended up not making sense. If someone could convince me why the climax was the way it was, this book would have a higher rating from me.
content warnings: gaslighting, violence, blood, gun, drug dealing, drug abuse (laced hash), mentions of cannibalism, mentions of dui (alcohol), mentions of cancer, mentions of losing parent to cancer, mentions of losing family to car accident, on-page and off-page murder, overdose of minor character, sex (m/f, not graphic)
Buddy read with Gabriella!
I received a digital review copy from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.
INITIAL THOUGHTS: somebody tell me why the big reveal is not also the biggest plot hole ever…
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