Reckless Girls

Six strangers converge on a remote Pacific island with secrets they'd rather leave behind. Rachel Hawkins' thriller follows Lux, a young woman adrift after personal loss, who signs on to crew a sailboat ferrying two college friends to the isolated paradise of Meroe Island. What begins as an escape from ordinary life quickly darkens when the group discovers they're not alone, and the island's grim history of violence begins to feel less like legend and more like prophecy. The story draws from the best of closed-circle suspense, trapping its characters somewhere beautiful and inescapable while peeling back their carefully maintained facades.

Barrie Kreinik narrates with a measured quality that suits the slow-building dread, capturing Lux's guarded optimism before the atmosphere turns. At just under eight hours, the runtime moves efficiently, and Hawkins' prose translates well to audio, where the isolation of the open ocean and the heat-hazed island feel immersive in a way the page alone can't fully replicate. Listeners who enjoy paranoia-laced vacation thrillers will find this one hard to pause.