Title: Reckless Girls
Author: Rachel Hawkins
Genre: Mystery/thriller
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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.
So, yeah, when every character is a crappy person, it’s a huge turnoff for me. I wasn’t sure about Lux until about 2/3 of the way through the book, so I kept reading, but…I wish I hadn’t. Brittany and Amma were nice on the surface, and so were Jake and Eliza, but you could tell something was off. And who in their right mind would stay in the literal middle of nowhere with no way to contact a soul, with people they don’t know? That’s leaving out the skeevy guy who showed up—and he just served to reveal everyone’s true colors.
Rachel Hawkins is a bestselling author. Reckless Girls is her newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)
Tomorrow Is Another Day 