Finished Lost Girls by Ann Kelley. I received a copy of this from the publisher on Netgalley.
Bonnie, her best friend Jas and a few other teens and tweens are headed for a three-day wilderness expedition. (They belong to an organization that’s very similar to the Girl Scouts.) Unfortunately, they end up on a different island than expected (long story) and the boat that comes to pick them up gets wrecked. To make matters worse, this is a scary place to be stranded. The weather is awful and there are a lot of wild animals and no other people. AND no one knows where they are (again, different island than expected).
Bonnie should have realized things were going to be awful when she talks about Lord of the Flies and then says that of course things were bad—it was an island of boys. Girls would never act like that. Oh, Bonnie. Girls are worse than boys any day.
This is not an exceptionally cheerful story. There are a lot of children and one adult, who—God love her—is worse than the kids. You know the adult who falls apart in crisis situations? She’s in charge. So basically the kids are all on their own.
This is definitely an interesting story and it serves to affirm my conviction that nature is bad. This actually reminded me a lot of The Ruins by Scott Smith (although I preferred that) because from the second the boat goes toward the island and the boatsman is all “No! It’s cursed!”, you know that this is going to be an unfortunate story for all involved. And you are right. But there aren’t any talking, scary plants in this, so at least there’s that.
Apparently, this is based on a true story, but I don’t know how close this comes to the actual case. (Remember, lots of things are “based” on true stories.) If you enjoy survival-type stories, you’ll probably like this one. For me, the most interesting (and terrifying) part is just how quickly things fall apart. Some get mean, some get lazy but almost no one becomes a better person. It’s not cheerful but I think it’s very realistic.
