Wild Girls, Mary Stewart Atwell's debut novel, draws readers deep into the terrors of adolescence: the insecurities of friendship, first loves and high school parties. In case high school is not daunting enough on its own, these terrors are further multiplied by the dark rumors that swirl around Swan River Academy, an all-girls boarding school nestled in the Appalachians. Teenage girls gone wild, they say, setting fire to local buildings, breaking windows, killing their friends and families: "wild girls." The locals try to pretend that everything is perfectly normal in Swan River, but Kate Riordan knows that something is very, very wrong with her hometown. As one of the only day students attending Swan River Academy, Kate dedicates her teenage years to becoming anything but a wild girl, but quickly finds herself pulled back into the stories of her youth by those closest to her.
Wild Girls proves a cleverly reimagined take on the classic coming-of-age tale, combining boarding school politics and typical teenage romances with an undercurrent of dark magic and even darker power plays that chills to the bone. The result is a compelling novel filled with enough small details of the high school experience to keep an otherwise fantastical tale grounded in the real world. Readers will be waiting for more from Atwell in the future. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm