🏝🏝🏝🏝
Reckless girls
Rachel Hawkins
320 pages
Published by St. Martin
A tropical island with salty air, crystal blue sea and lush sun. Sounds idyllic. (Especially considering the current temp where I’m hovering in the freezer.) Pack a suitcase full of books and a swimsuit!
Reckless Girls start out exactly the kind you would imagine. Alcohol, barbecue, swimwear and beautiful people. Our main character, Lux, and her boyfriend, Nico, were hired to sail two girlfriends, Brittany and her mother, to the abandoned island of Miro for two weeks. When they arrive, they meet Jake and Eliza who have already enjoyed the island’s paradise. Unreasonable friendships begin to form between the six when they go on life leave. But all the fun and games stop quickly when another visitor arrives. Very quickly it is clear that secrets abound, and everyone has a penchant for tricks.
“These people are basically all strangers to me, and I’m alone with them in the middle of the Pacific.”
Hawkins skillfully creates the atmosphere for Mero. On the one hand, it is the destination we all dream of. Amazing living and growing. Waterfalls and swimming holes. Sandy white beaches. But it also stems oddly from his ugly history of shipwrecks, cannibalism and death. There is ominous claustrophobia for Mero that can not be shaken off, no matter how sunny or beautiful the island looks.
The plot held me back, and I was never able to decide exactly who to trust. Good exclamation marks for extra security. But the end disappointed me. Some of the highlights of the record were the ones I was expecting. But the way it was done and the big twist … it just did not work for me. Too absurd. Too many loopholes. And in the end I wanted more from the end.
In order to fully enjoy the mystery of this island, put aside your need for reasonableness, and lean back and enjoy the chilling vibrations involved in the sun.
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