Reckless Girls

What's inside (7 sections)

1. Crossing to Meroe
2. Jake and Eliza on the Azure Sky
3. Robbie and the radios
4. What Brittany and Amma were hiding
5. The last night and what Lux does after
6. Key takeaways
7. FAQ

I picked up Reckless Girls because I wanted something hot and fast after a run of heavier books. The edition I am summarizing is the St. Martin's Press hardcover from 2022, listed at 320 pages. It is a standalone thriller by Rachel Hawkins, the same writer behind The Wife Upstairs and Hex Hall. I expected a beach read with a body count. What I got was closer to a closed circle mystery in sunscreen, with six people on an empty island and lies getting thinner in the heat.

Spoilers from here on. You cannot explain this one without them.

Lux McAllister narrates most of it in present tense, with cuts back to Brittany and Amma traveling in Europe before the trip. Lux is twenty five, from San Diego. She quit college to care for her mother, who was dying of cancer. After her mother died, Lux drifted. She waited tables. She partied. She felt stuck with rent and tips and grief.

Then Nico Johannsen came into the restaurant where she worked. Handsome, easy, a boat mechanic who had just bought a sailboat called the Susannah. The boat was named for a college ex, which should have been a warning. Nico talked about sailing to Hawaii and then around the world, living cheap and free. For someone who had spent two years watching a parent die, that sounded like air.

She followed him to Hawaii. That part made me wince, because they had not been together long. Still, I got it. When you are grieving and someone offers a plan, you take the plan.

Hawaii does not match the picture. The Susannah is damaged on the way over. Nico cannot pay for repairs. He will not call his parents in La Jolla, who have money from a family firm. He wants to make it alone, which sounds principled until you share a cramped house with four others and scrub hotel rooms at the Haleakala Resort to cover rent. Lux gets fired for mouthing off about a guest. She comes home embarrassed and finds Nico excited about two girls from the marina.

That is how Brittany and Amma enter. Both twenty two, American, bright and full of plans. They want to hire Nico to take them to Meroe Island. They offer fifty thousand dollars.

Meroe is the hook. Hawkins builds it before we see it. An atoll in the South Pacific, uninhabited, hard to reach, with a bad name. Sailors wrecked there long ago and rumor says they turned to cannibalism. The island was used in the war years, then left alone. Now it gets the odd visitor who wants a story for home. Lux reads about it and feels uneasy. Nico sees a payday and a way to fix the Susannah.

Lux says yes on one condition. Fix the Susannah with the money and take that boat, all four, for two weeks out and back. Nico agrees. They shop for rice and fuel and sunscreen. Brittany is vague about how she met Amma. College, she says, then changes the subject. Amma is warmer. She tells Lux to bring her books and the photo of her mother when Nico says leave them. Lux files that away.

The sail takes about three days and it is rough. Storm, sickness, fear. Lux helps and tries not to show it. Nico is short with her, less patient than in San Diego. She notices him watching Amma, who looks at home on a boat. Lux pushes the thought aside.

Crossing to Meroe

They reach Meroe in the morning and for a few pages it is paradise. White sand. Clear water. Palms in wind. Lux swims and her head goes quiet for the first time in months.

Then she sees the other boat.

A big catamaran called the Azure Sky, anchored neat. It belongs to Jake and Eliza. Jake is in his thirties, tanned, confident, the kind who owns a pistol and wants you to know. Eliza is younger, beautiful, cool, a little distant. They act rich, with champagne and good food and stories about sailing anywhere. They invite the four to a bonfire.

Lux likes them and feels guilty for it. Amma goes stiff and barely talks. Brittany is open and fun. Nico relaxes for the first time in weeks. Under stars it feels like the trip might work.

They fall into a routine. Swim. Nap. Walk. There is an old airstrip, cracked and grown over. They find a skull in brush, which Jake treats as a joke. Lux cannot shake it.

Hawkins cuts to flashbacks. Brittany lost her family in a car crash caused by a drunk teen driver. Amma attached herself to Brittany through a grief group. Amma said she knew loss. She did not say the driver was her boyfriend Sterling Northcutt, or that his rich family got him a light sentence. She did not say she helped talk him into driving out for beer that night. She wanted a friend to ease her guilt. Brittany wanted someone to sit with her grief.

Traveling, they pick up a British girl named Chloe. Chloe lifts cash from tourists. She watches people. She vanishes after a theft goes wrong and a man they stole from turns up dead. Amma thinks Chloe killed him. The friendship cracks, though they still call each other best friends.

I found these flashbacks useful but slow. Hawkins holds back key facts a long time. Lots of hostels and small fights before you learn what links the girls. I see why. She wants you to trust Brittany and doubt Amma, then flip it. Still, a third of the way in I skimmed Europe to get back to the island.

Jake and Eliza on the Azure Sky

On Meroe, Jake and Eliza become the center. Their boat is bigger, with ice and liquor and a working shower. The four start spending evenings there. If you ever traveled cheap around people with money, you know the pull.

Jake takes Lux walking. He teaches her to shoot his pistol in the bush, which scared me because a gun shown early never stays unused. He talks loose about sailing and money. Eliza watches all. Polite to Lux, cold to Amma.

Nico changes. Laid back on the mainland, now he drinks more and listens less. Loud around Jake. Snapping at Lux about water or lines. Lux calls it stress. Part of me wanted to shake her. He likes being admired. He likes Jake's approval. He looks less at Lux.

Brittany keeps peace. She plans swims and meals. She asks Lux about her mother and listens, which Lux craves. Amma pulls away, reading alone, walking alone. She flirts with Nico in small touches and glances. Hawkins does not hide it. You watch it build.

One night Lux returns early for sunscreen and finds them together. Blunt and ugly. She does not scream. She sits on the beach a long time, then decides she saw what she saw. Amma apologizes badly, saying Nico reminds her of her ex. Lux moves to the beach to sleep.

This is where the book lifts for me. The affair could feel soapy, but Hawkins ties it to money. Lux has none here. The Susannah is in Nico's name, though he once said he put it in her name for taxes, a detail that returns later. She has no way off except with these people. So cheating leaves her stranded, more than hurt.

Robbie and the radios

As the group splits, with Lux and Brittany drifting to Jake and Eliza and Nico with Amma, a third boat arrives. Sailed by Robbie, alone, sunburned and grinning and off from the first minute.

Robbie tells long stories about Meroe, visitors who vanished, what people do when hungry or scared. People do what they have to do to survive, he says, looking at Lux. Crude jokes. Stares. He appears where Lux swims alone. Lux tells Nico she dislikes him. Nico shrugs. Jake says he will talk to him, gun in waistband. They argue on the path. Jake fires to scare him. Robbie runs to jungle. His boat stays, he does not return that day.

Then both boats' radios are found smashed. No one admits it. No call for pickup or weather. Jake says he can get new radios dropped in ten days. Count food and water for six over ten days and it feels thin. Lux counts. She knows how to count supplies.

Lux finds a bag on the Azure Sky with cash and drugs. A lot of cash. She tells no one. Eliza catches her looking and smiles without warmth. Around then Jake takes Lux walking and they sleep together on the beach. She feels sick after, not only over Nico, but because she used Jake to feel less powerless. He treats it as fun. That coldness scares her more.

Then they find Robbie in the jungle, dead. Looks like bad fish, the kind locals avoid. Jake calls it accident. Maybe. But Lux finds her own passport in Robbie's pocket. How? Did he steal it? Did someone plant it? A passport is specific to steal on an empty island. It hints someone planned who could leave.

Fair criticism. Hawkins stacks trouble fast here. Smashed radios, affair out, new boat, drugs found, Robbie dead, passport found, all in maybe sixty pages. I read fast for answers, but some reactions felt staged. People find a corpse then swim an hour later. Lux fears Robbie yet walks jungle alone. Heat and drink and shock explain some, but a few choices serve plot more than character.

What works is isolation. No signal. Food soft. Cuts infected. Fights about dishes that are really fear. Lux sleeps with her knife. She stops drinking Jake's punch to keep a clear head. Those bits rang true.

What Brittany and Amma were hiding

The break happens on the Azure Sky. Amma confronts Eliza. Brittany shouts at Amma. Old charges spill out.

Brittany says Amma lied from the start. No college meeting. Amma hunted her at a support group because Amma's boyfriend Sterling killed Brittany's parents and siblings and got a short term with family money helping. Amma never said who she was. She played best friend, paid for hostels, planned trips. Brittany learned truth from Chloe in Italy, too late and too tangled to walk away clean.

Amma says she tried to make amends, loved Brittany like family. Brittany hears a trick by a rich girl who wanted pardon without asking. To her the friendship was false.

Lux listens and feels ground shift. She thought those two were stable, with money and plans. Now she sees two girls using each other and calling it healing. If Amma lied a year about identity, what else is false?

That night all fails at once, in the order Hawkins gives. Nico takes the Susannah out without telling Lux. Eliza hints he left because he learned of Lux and Jake. Panic, drink. Amma returns wild. She and Eliza fight on deck. Brittany shouts. Lux ends in water, Amma gripping her under. Lux kicks free to breathe, swims dark to shore coughing and cut. Amma washes up face down. Dead.

Hawkins leaves it messy. Lux is unsure how hard she fought, or if sea did it. Horrified and relieved, then ashamed of relief. Most thrillers make self defense tidy. This one does not, and I respected that.

Morning. Nico and Susannah gone. Azure Sky quiet. Dried blood on sand. Lux takes a machete from the path. She calls for Nico through empty coves, more afraid each time. She finds him in brush near the airstrip. Dead. Jake's machete nearby. She lifts it to avoid empty hands. She walks to beach where Susannah sits anchored again, as if moved in night.

Eliza and Brittany wait. Not surprised at the weapon. That calm scared me most.

The last night and what Lux does after

Eliza is not Eliza. She is Chloe from Italy, new hair and name, attached to Jake later. Jake moves drugs and cash on his boat. Chloe knew. She stayed for a way out.

Brittany and Chloe shaped this, more than every death but much of it. They wanted Jake dead and Amma dead. In their view Jake preyed on women and escaped blame, tied to what happened to Chloe's mother years back. Amma was the rich girl whose boyfriend killed Brittany's family and got little time. They lured Amma with the charter and wild trip talk. They used Nico for his need and boat. They used Lux as cover, to make it look normal.

Brittany admits she killed Nico. Plain, almost gentle. Lux would never be free till he was gone, she says. He cheated, fed on her grief, kept her dependent. She thought it a gift. Lux feels sick, because anger once put that thought in her own head.

Before Lux answers, Jake steps from trees, alive, bleeding, furious. Chloe holds the pistol, fires in panic and hits Brittany, not Jake. Brittany falls. Chloe shoots Jake in the leg. Then Chloe offers Lux the gun to finish Jake. Sink Azure Sky with drugs aboard, take Susannah and money, leave together. Make options, take back what the world took from women with no money and few choices.

Lux takes the gun. She shoots Chloe. Then she shoots Jake.

I set the book down a minute. Less for gore than because the choice feels shocking yet set up. All book Lux let others decide, Nico, Jake, Brittany, where to swim, what to eat. Here she decides. No join, no pardon. End it.

Next comes in fragments, news bits and hazy memory. Another boat finds Meroe later. Bodies. Robbie in jungle. Amma on beach. Nico in brush. Brittany and Jake and Chloe near Susannah. Lux listed missing. She took cash from Jake's bag, took Susannah, left.

Epilogue shifts to Thailand. Lux meets sad tourist Caroline in a bar. Cheating boyfriend, money control. Lux listens as Chloe once listened. Shows how to lift cash. Talks boats and freedom. Kind voice, friend voice. You see she learned Chloe's trick. Find tender women, help them steal, move on.

Hawkins does not say if Lux feels guilt. She says Lux survives. That is the point and my gripe. The book frames Lux as victim turned predator, remade by island. I bought survival. The turn from hotel maid counting tips to cool thief recruiting next girl lands in twenty pages. Trauma can teach lying fast, I allow that. Still, I wanted one scene of Lux alone with acts, instead of moving straight to the next mark.

More gripes worth naming. Nico is thin. Selfish enough to cheat, weak enough to use, but we never learn what he wanted beyond sailing west and praise. Jake scares more in talk than act until end. How Chloe found Jake and learned of drug money leans on late reveals. Meroe, vivid early, fades to backdrop in gunfire. I wanted history braided into final fight.

What held me was Lux voice on money. Who has it, who claims need none, who uses it to forgive self. How men like Nico and Jake turn gifts to control. Free dinner, fixed boat, gun lesson, all strings. She admits envy of Amma ease or Brittany nerve. Admits she stayed past time because exit felt pricier than stay.

If you like locked room books, this is a locked island with sunburn. Structure nods to And Then There Were None, strangers with secret reasons in one place, though Hawkins cares more for class and gender than puzzle. If you disliked The Wife Upstairs twists, this will not convert you. Hawkins twists hard. If you liked its pace and bite, you will finish in two sittings as I did.

I closed thinking of Hawaii, Lux cleaning rooms for vacationers while Nico charmed girls at marina. She began near zero. She ends with boat and stolen cash and blood. Free? Hawkins hints such freedom keeps billing. Lux can sail far, yet carries Meroe, watchful habit, take. That stayed past shootout.

Read for air and last hundred pages. Forgive slow Europe stretch and packed middle. Bring sunscreen and trust none, least of all helpful ones.

FAQ

When was Reckless Girls published?

St. Martin's Press published the hardcover on January 4, 2022. The first edition runs 320 pages with ISBN 9781250274250.

Is Reckless Girls part of a series?

No. It is a standalone thriller. Lux, Nico, Brittany, Amma, Jake and Chloe do not return in another book.

Who is Eliza really in Reckless Girls?

Eliza is Chloe, the British thief Brittany and Amma met in Europe. She changed her name, joined Jake on the Azure Sky, and planned revenge with Brittany.