Just Finished Reading: The Wild Girls by Phoebe Morgan (FP: 2021) [303pp] 

It was an invitation out of the blue. After two years, after the trauma, Felicity was back in touch and with her usual flamboyant style. She was celebrating her birthday and wanted to get the gang back together, her closest friends, the Wild Girls. But this wouldn’t be just any celebration, she was really pushing the boat out. This was going to be an all-expenses paid safari in Botswana! How could her friends possibly refuse – despite being a teacher, despite being a young mother, despite being desperate and broke... One by one each of her friends replied with a positive and then started talking to each other again. Maybe this was the start of them all getting their lives back on track, maybe each of them could now start putting the past behind them. Maybe... Although when of then had other ideas, one of them had decided to bury the past for good – along with her so-called friends. 

Over the last 5 years or more I’ve been picking up the odd modern/contemporary thriller/crime novel. What I haven’t been doing, generally, is actually reading them. With the New Year still in sight over my shoulder I thought it was a good time to start. Unfortunately, I started with this one... If I hadn’t already DNFd one book so far this year, this would’ve been my first. But, instead of throwing it across the room towards the nearest bin I gritted my teeth and finished it. Overall, it wasn’t THAT badly written despite a few ‘continuity errors’ I noticed sprinkled throughout the story. What I really didn’t like about the book (or should I say mostly disliked) was the characters – ALL of them. These where a group of four ‘friends’ who had apparently known each other since age 9. Yet, throughout the book they seemed to neither know very much about each other nor to actually LIKE each other all that much. Living inside each of their heads – the PoV was constantly changing as was the move from 1st to 3rd person – even for a short time was both painful and frustrating. One particular bugbear I have in stories is when a character has an important piece of information that can save lives and yet they don’t share it for stupid reasons. Here we had that in spades – repeatedly! Its lucky that my hair has strong roots (even at my age) or I’d be bald around now. 

The scenes in Botswana were particularly annoying as the ‘victims’ struggled to understand what was going on and the danger they were in and repeatedly failed to make even the most basic attempts to protect themselves or survive what was coming at them. If I had been with them at the resort I would’ve happily left them to their fates and left by the simple act of lifting a phone.... [screams in frustration]. Needless to say, I am NOT recommending this and will be dropping off my copy at the local charity shop along with any other books by this author that I might have also bought (I think I *might* have one, but I’m not 100% sure). Hopefully my future reading of contemporary ‘thrillers’ will be better, but we’re definitely not off to a good start!