Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan

The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan (Morrow, 2022) is Morgan’s fourth thriller. Her fifth book is scheduled for release in 2023. Grace, Felicity, Alice, and Hannah formed a tight bond during their school days and it persisted as they undertook careers. Until one devastating evening when their friendship shattered. Felicity, the ringleader, moved to New York and the three remaining in London went their separate ways until two years later they each receive an invitation to celebrate Felicity’s birthday in Botswana. Despite various commitments, they each decide to go. After a long flight they are met by a chauffeur who takes them to Deception Valley Lodges, an exotic resort near the Limpopo River, when the action really begins.

The story is told in the voices of the four friends, with a long flashback to the pivotal incident that shattered their alliance. This rotating POV and shifting timeline is the current style and I have become resigned to it, but it results in a choppy read. The considerable foreshadowing and oblique references to incidents in the group’s collective history does create and sustain a high level of suspense.

Readers familiar with Christie’s And Then There Were None (1939) will recognize the inspiration for the basic plot, but Morgan incorporates several original elements including a close look at friendships among women and the way they tend to assume roles within a cohesive group. Morgan says in the acknowledgements that the book was written during the 2020 COVID shutdown and she could not travel to Botswana for onsite research. This lack of firsthand experience with the setting shows, as the colorful African landscape tends to fade out. There’s a lost opportunity here to establish a striking backdrop for a chilling story similar to The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian (2022). Not that this book isn’t unsettling, it most definitely is, but the proximity of the Kalahari Desert and a major waterway could have been used to greater felonious advantage.

For fans of psychological thrillers.

 

·         Publisher: ‎ William Morrow Paperbacks (April 26, 2022)

·         Language: ‎ English

·         Paperback: ‎ 320 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎ 0063144832

·         ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0063144835

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.