The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan

​   Straight out of Ruth Ware’s playbook, Wild Girls sees four estranged friends get together for a birthday celebration of one of them, only to have it turn deadly.
   The eponymous wild girls have been friends for years and years and yet their friendship had taken a plunge a couple of years back over the circumstances the novel withholds from you for a long time and then reveals it…and it’s hugely disappointing.  One of those “is this it? really” sort of things, like if that’s what tore them apart, maybe it wasn’t that much of a friendship to begin with.
    But anyway, despite that anti-climatically dramatic event from their past, they find it within themselves to reconnect, a desire powered in no small way by an all-expense paid trip to Botswana. Because the friend whose birthday they are celebrating has money. And so, woo hoo, and off they go. And boy, doesn’t it seem glamourous at first. Despite the creepily named resort. Despite the fact that there’s no one there to greet them. Despite the creepy personal notes left for them.
     The wild girls don’t care, they are all in a ‘girls just wanna have fun’ mode. They want to forget their lives for a moment and why wouldn’t they. One of them is unhappy in her relationship and trapped with an oppressing shared mortgage, one is tired to death of her new baby, and one is just depressed and alone.
    Everyone drinks accordingly and everyone takes their time realizing their situation is far from normal. Then the body count begins.
     Suffice it to say this wasn’t the vacation any of them had in mind. But it might be exactly what you as a reader had in mind in selecting this easy breezy beach read of a thriller. I mean, exotic location – check. Relatable in a women’s fiction or chicklit way characters – check. Plot twist -check, two of them, in fact.
     It underwhelms conceptually, because of the hyperbolic quality of the antagonists and their motivations, but if you don’t overthink it, it is a fun read. It works the formula well and provides a sufficient diversion. Yes, it doesn’t sustain the promise of the initial setup and yes, the melodramatics are kinda cheap and cheesy at times and yes, it’s characters are all cardboard clichés of specific preset types, but overall, it works and does what these sorts of books are supposed to…entertains. Thanks Netgalley.