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.
Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins. Narrated by Barrie Kreinik. Published by Macmillan Audio, January 2022. Total run time of 8 hours.
Ok, ok, So I said 2023 was the year of tackling my TBR list…. BUT, when I saw this audiobook on the library app, I just had to. I looked sooooo fun! Straight up thriller isn’t always a genre I go crazy for, but this one just sounded fun. Plus, I’ve been hearing a lot about this authors up coming book, The Villa. When I saw the author had this book out last year, I just figured, why not??
WOOOOOO HOOO!!! Now that was entertaining! 😀 Reckless Girls was a crazy great time. Man! Makes me never want to go sailing, though! Haha. Or go off to uncharted islands. 😮 Or meet new people! Geez….
I pretty much loved everything about this book. Perfect set up, great premise, solid plot, and what an ending! Chef kiss filled with devilish delight. What a twist! I did not see all that coming at all. 😀
The characters felt so real. It felt like you really could run into any of them on a vacation. The friendships were flawed and messy. Everything about them felt so realistic even though these people were more extreme than most (I hope!). Totally crazy time.
The story is told from multiple PoVs and alternating between “Before” and “Now”. I wasn’t a huge fan of the flash back scenes at first, but they grew on me pretty quickly. And what a great pay off? Oooo, nice!
The narrator does a solid performance. She switches between accents and genders with ease. So easy to follow the conversations because everyone sounded so different. She did a really nice job of capturing the reckless, party atmosphere.
So happy I took a chance with Reckless Girls. No complaints. I ate this story up! From start to finish this book had me dying to see how things were going to play out. Fun, fun and fun and now I’m even more excited to read The Villa now! 😀 If you want a great vacation thriller, here you go!
Creature From The Book Lagoon 