Lost Girls: Review

Review:

Lost Girls is set in the 1970′s where a group of girls set off for a three-day camping trip to an island off the coast of Thailand. A strong current carries them past the island they’re supposed to visit and the boatmen leaves them on a different island known as “the forbidden island” to the locals.

The girls are all excited to be there and spend the first day enjoying the beach, but when a strong storm blows in, destroying their campsite and killing one of the younger girls, things begin to go quickly downhill. They know they only need to hold on for a couple more days and then the boat will return for them. When the boat doesn’t come, it’s evident that they may not make it off the island. No one knows where they are.
When their cadet leader goes AWOL on them, fourteen-year-old Bonnie and her best friend Jas do their best to help the other girls survive, venturing into the forest to find food amidst king cobras, wild boars, tigers and other dangerous creatures — they literally have to fight to keep themselves and the remaining girls alive.
I wasn’t sure what I would be getting myself into when I started this book, but I’m so glad I read it.

While reading the first chapter, a few questions burned in my mind. Why do they go ahead with the trip when there’s so much flooding happening already in Thailand? The weather is awful when they leave, so why did they even get on the boat in the first place? My second burning question was why did the boatman just leave them at the “forbidden island” and more importantly, why did the cadet leader allow it to happen? These questions still lingered throughout the book, but once the action picked up and the girls were fighting for their lives, I pushed the questions aside. It didn’t matter why they were there any longer, just that they got home safe.

Ms. Kelley’s writing is perfect for this book. The tone effectively shifts from a sense of excitement about the adventure, to worry, to all out survival. You experience the story through Bonnie’s eyes (the story is also peppered with her personal journal entries), and though you spend the book inside Bonnie’s head, you get a good feel of all the other characters as well.

Some have compared this to a female Lord of the Flies, and I do agree to an extent. If you are a fan of survival stories/movies ( a la Castaway and Lost – minus the mind-trippy twists) this is the book for you.