Rachel Hawkins follows up The Wife Upstairs with another twisty suspense novel. Set on an infamous but beautiful atoll just a few days sail from Maui, Reckless Girls contrasts the idyll of beach vacation life with a gothic sense of foreboding and plenty of dark secrets.
Lux has just been fired from her hotel housekeeping job when her privileged boyfriend, Nico, is hired to transport two college-age women to Meroe Island, known as a World War II refueling stop--and the site of a shipwreck that devolved into murder and cannibalism. When Lux and Nico arrive at Meroe with their passengers, Brittany and Amma, they're surprised to find another boat already there. Eliza and Jake are wealthy and glamorous, quick to share their seemingly endless supply of wine and food. At first, their two-week stay is the ultimate vacation, but then a menacing stranger arrives, setting off a chain of events that strains relationships and forces secrets into the open.
As tensions rise and murderous intentions are revealed, readers will frantically urge Lux to take her broken boat and flee, helpless to watch as the plot builds to an explosive conclusion. Hawkins uses the tensions among her young, beautiful characters to take a look at the intersections of class and gender, but there are no innocent people in this treacherous paradise. Fans of the film The Beach and television's Lost will be enthralled. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer