“We call it the Tox, and for the first few months, they tried to make it a lesson.
That ended quickly. Classes falling off the schedule as the Tox took teacher after teacher. Rules crumbling to dust and fading away, until only the barest bones were left.”
Sometimes a book comes around that stirs such an intense response within a reader that there’s really nothing for it but to create a response—in the form of art. BookPeople is very fortunate to be home to many creative minds, and today we’re thrilled to feature the art of Gifts Inventory Manager, Jessica L.
The book is Wilder Girls, a debut YA novel by Rory Power. Gorgeous and deliciously dark, this novel has been highly anticipated by your BookPeople booksellers. The story of an isolated girl’s boarding school under quarantine because of a creeping, transformative disease, Wilder Girls has been called a feminist Lord of the Flies as the girls must establish their own (sometimes violent) rules of survival once the disease has eliminated the adults. When one of her best friends disappears, Hetty must brave the transformed island and uncover the truth of their confinement as The Tox seeps into everything.
“What pulled me in was the boarding school setting—I’m a sucker for that—then, the relationships between the girls (as this horrifying phenomenon is happening to them all) are engrossing and heartbreaking. It’s tragically beautiful because they’re not alone—they have each other—but the level of horror that runs through this book is just devastating. As I read I just wanted so badly for the girls to be okay.”
Check out Jessica’s incredible illustration, in ink and acrylic gouache, in response to Wilder Girls (our latest teen fiction obsession) by Rory Power below!
“It’s tragically beautiful because they’re not alone—they have each other…”
Jessica is an Austin artist whose work focuses on themes of feminism, self-expression, and empowerment—you can see more of her work on Instagram @weaseldoesart!
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