From Rachel Hawkins, the New York Times bestselling author of The Wife Upstairs, comes Reckless Girls, a deliciously wicked gothic suspense, set on an isolated Pacific island with a dark history, for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.
Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links; thank you for the support.
Summary (From the Publisher)
When Lux McAllister and her boyfriend, Nico, are hired to sail two women to a remote island in the South Pacific, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. Stuck in a dead-end job in Hawaii and longing to travel the world after a family tragedy, Lux is eager to climb on board The Susannah and set out on an adventure. She’s also quick to bond with their passengers, college best friends Brittany and Amma. The two women say they want to travel off the beaten path. But like Lux, they may have other reasons to be seeking an escape.
Shimmering on the horizon after days at sea, Meroe Island is every bit the paradise the foursome expects, despite a mysterious history of shipwrecks, cannibalism, and even rumors of murder. But what they don’t expect is to discover another boat already anchored off Meroe’s sandy beaches. The owners of the Azure Sky, Jake, and Eliza, are a true golden couple: gorgeous, laidback, and if their sleek catamaran and a well-stocked bar are any indications, rich. Now a party of six, the new friends settle into experiencing life on an exotic island and the serenity of being completely off the grid. Lux hasn’t felt like she truly belonged anywhere in years, yet here on Meroe, she finally has a sense of peace with these fellow free spirits.
But with the arrival of a skeevy stranger sailing alone in pursuit of a darker kind of good time, the group’s balance is disrupted. Soon, cracks begin to emerge: it seems that Brittany and Amma haven’t been completely honest with Lux about their pasts––and perhaps not even with each other. And though Jake and Eliza seem like the perfect pair, the rocky history of their relationship begins to resurface, and their reasons for sailing to Meroe might not be as innocent as they first appeared.
When it becomes clear that the group is even more cut off from civilization than they initially thought, it starts to feel like the island itself is closing in on them. And when one person goes missing, and another turns up dead, Lux begins to wonder if any of them will make it off the island alive.
My Thoughts
After reading The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins, I was excited to read Reckless Girls. I was even more excited after seeing the cover. But after reading the novel, I was left disappointed and confused.
Reading Reckless Girls was a lot like watching a badly made-for-TV movie that you can’t stop watching. The characters were one-dimensional and made predictable bad decisions.
The book was fast-paced but lacked interesting plot twists and multi-layered storylines. In fact, instead of a concise storyline, Reckless Girls was riddled with plot holes that I could not ignore. The ending was cliche, and I could see it coming long before the book’s final chapters.
Reckless Girls is a quick and semi-entertaining read, even with the predictability and horrible characters. At the end of the day, I would give Reckless Girls a solid three stars out of five because the book did keep me engaged.