In the publisher’s description of Rachel Hawkins’ new novel Reckless Girls you will find the phrase “deliciously wicked” and there really are no two words that could better capture the spirit of this fun and exciting tale of suspense that happens to be both topical and tropical.
Six young adults meet on an incredibly remote small island in the Pacific Ocean for a fun-in-the-sun getaway in a place that is off the beaten path—no tourists traps for these twenty-somethings! But events on the island start to make them realise that being completely removed from civilisation has its drawbacks as well.
There is enough evidence of murders, past as well as present, to keep anyone from mistaking Meroe Island for a dreamy tropical paradise. With its brutal, violent history this island certainly seems like an odd destination choice for a fun sailing adventure, but Hawkins keeps the reader guessing about every character and their motivations for being there until the very end, while the reader stays obsessed with what they will learn about these characters next.
All of the young people in the story have unique backgrounds, and in the same way that some of them have defined their lives in terms of “before” and “after” a traumatic experience they have survived, Hawkins has cleverly laid out the novel in the same fashion. How each person came to be on Meroe Island is told as their “before” and these background details are scattered throughout the book, as the story progresses.
I was so impressed with Hawkins’ ability to keep the fun, engaging writing style of her previous novel, The Wife Upstairs, but give readers a totally different experience with Reckless Girls—a darker tone with higher stakes, more tension, and much edgier characters. I am anxious and excited for whatever Rachel Hawkins brings us next!
Reckless Girls is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
Will you be picking up Reckless Girls? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wife Upstairs comes a deliciously wicked gothic suspense, set on an isolated Pacific island with a dark history, for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.
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 well-stocked bar are any indication, rich. Now a party of six, the new friends settle in to experience 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, with these fellow free spirits, she finally has a sense of peace.
But with the arrival of a skeevy stranger sailing alone in pursuit of a darker kind of good time, the balance of the group 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 are going to make it off the island alive.
