Score: 4.25/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to St Martins and Macmillan Audio for gifting me review copies of Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins. I loved her last book The Wife Upstairs so was beyond excited when I received this one!

Ooh it’s twisty, so get ready! I want to say so many things about this book, but I can’t without spoiling it for you, and I do not want to do that because you’re going to want to read this one for yourself. So let’s just say it starts out with six hotties, two boats, and one deserted island with a gruesome history and goes from there.

Lux McAllister and her boyfriend Nico have been working in Hawaii, trying to save enough money to fix up their boat. When two college girls hire them to take them out to a remote, and deserted, island it sounds like an adventure too unique to pass up.

When they arrive at Meroe Island they’re disappointed to find that there’s already another couple there. They soon become friends though, and spend their time together on the beach and each other’s boats. Until things start to go very wrong.

You have elements of locked-door mystery because of the secluded island setting. Although do you ever really know what or who else might be lurking in the thick jungle interior of the island?!

Meroe Island was named after a ship that was wrecked there in 1821 and while it looks like the perfect paradise it is deadly. From its lack of fresh water, to being surrounded by poisonous fish and sharks. HMS Meroe wasn’t the only ship to wreck in the coral reefs surrounding the island either, and there are rumors that crews had to resort to cannibalism to survive.

The audiobook was sooo good! It was expertly narrated by Barrie Kreinik and was 7 hours and 43 minutes long. I thought she did such a great job bringing all the characters to life but also adding to the suspense through her performance.

Click here to download the audiobook right now, or get a physical copy via the button below.

Synopsis:

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.