Book Review: Reckless Girls

"... I look around at the sand and the sea and the jungle behind us, wondering how a place that's so open, so free, could feel like such a trap," muses a character at one point in Rachel Hawkins' Reckless Girls. The line perfectly sums up what's a claustrophobic thriller set against the backdrop of Meroe Island, an unhabited atoll on the Pacific Ocean, and a page-turner, albeit one in which some surprises mesh better than others, even as it attempts to connect the dots telling the story of a group of people who find themselves on the idyllic tropical paradise for their own ulterior reasons, only to realise there's a killer in their midst. Soon enough, things take a dark turn and tensions mount, and there's paranoia all around. Though the answers aren't as powerful as the questions and the characters come across as unlikeable and bordering on obnoxious, Hawkins unveils each revelation of some new betrayal with surgical precision en route to a preposterous, open-ended finale.