Congrats Rachel
on the release of
Reckless Girls!
Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins
Mystery, Thriller, 320 pages
Published January 4, 2022 by St. Martin's Press
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.
My thoughts about Reckless Girls ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)
First lines—"Prologue: Salt water and blood taste the same. She'd never thought of that until now, until she was drowning in both, blood gushing from the wound in her temple, the sea rushing into her mouth."
Whoa! What an intense ride this one was. I knew from the get-go that something bad was going to happen—four people setting out on the big ocean in a small boat, the two couples knowing pretty much nothing about each other. You just know that's not going to turn out well. And there was nothing I could do to stop the bad from happening.
So this intense story, full of twists and turns, that goes where I'm not expecting it to go had me racing to the end. But then, I almost got whiplash at the head-turning ending. Wait, what just happened? I had to read the ending again to try to understand it. Another whoa!
Thank you Rachel Hawkins for another great thriller. Reckless Girls is a definite must read for an amazing experience!
I received a copy of Reckless Girls from the publisher via NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.
About the author
Rachel Hawkins was a high school English teacher before becoming a full-time writer. She lives with her family in Alabama, and is currently at work on the third book in the Hex Hall series. To the best of her knowledge, Rachel is not a witch, though some of her former students may disagree.... ~ Amazon
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