The Wilderness of Girls

In Franklin’s contemporary fairy tale, a group of teen girls struggle to acclimate to society following years living in the wild. After a period of familial trauma and parental neglect, 16-year-old Eden moves in with her kind uncle and reinvents herself as Rhi. While working at a wildlife preserve, Rhi comes across a quartet of teen girls exhibiting wolf-like behavior, the smallest of whom is caught in a bear trap. During the transpiring media spiral, the world eagerly waits to learn the girls’ mysterious identities. As Rhi earns the teens’ trust, she learns that they were raised by a man they call Mother, who believed they were the long-lost princesses of a mythical land called Leutheria, and that they must return there to save their home. The group also believes that Rhi is their prophesied fifth sister, prompting her to wonder whether the girls are victims of a kidnapper’s lifelong deceit, or if they speak the truth—and Leutheria is where she belongs. Shallow character development and caricature-like villains hamper deeper examinations of themes surrounding identity, sexual violence, truth, and trauma, which are explored via multiple alternating POVs in this jam-packed debut. Characters are racially diverse. Ages 14–up. Agent: Danielle Burby, Mad Woman Literary. (June)