Customer Reviews

Bad Girls

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bad Girls-A Novel is a book! Yes, people it's a book too! The celebrity gossip blogs are so busy focused on the movie no one is taking the time to actually read the book. The early buzz is that Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan may be attached to the movie. The book was written by Alex McAuley. The book reads like a movie. You can tell when you read it that cinema is in the future. The story opens up with a action packed scene. Anna is on the run. Two men on her trail. She is out in the wilderness, scared and hoping that she won't be found. When "The Boxer" and the big fat man finally catch her she struggles and gives them the silent treatment. This scene actually is a little foreshadowing. Anna's parents arrange for her to be sent away due to her "out of control" behavior. This is a good book a very interesting read. If you like Lost or remember the movie Lord of the Flies you will like this book. What I didn't like about the book is that some of the characters seem one dimensional. Perhaps I was picking up on the fact that a man was writing female characters. The cover is awesome but the title is a little unorignal. How many movies, books and songs have been titled "Bad Girls" over the years? I felt like they were acting in the book. But it's a good book and probably will make a good movie.

What an awesome book. From page one to three-hundred plus this book is a page turner.

It all starts with Anna's wild, uncontrollable behavior that gets her sent to Camp Archstone on Andros Island. Everything is mechanical in this wilderness camp for bad girls. Every girl has a story to tell and Anna doesn't know who she can trust. On a camping trip something goes horribly wrong and the real adventure begins. The girls must fight for their lives and the reader feels as if they are truly a bad girl. There are so many different scenarios, and secrets living within the island. The whole time Anna has flashbacks of her own secret that she's hiding. Who will make it to safety, if anyone?

This book was a great read. The ending wasn't as strong, it was kind-of sappy in my opinion. Other than that, this makes for a great summer read. I would say it's for the young adult 18+ crowd.

I liked this book alot. It takes a very interesting book for me to finish the whole book. I finished it in a week. I can't wait for the next Alex Mcaulay novel to come.

I bought this book based on the cover art and the fact that MTV published it. It exceeded my expectations and got better and better as I read. The main character, Anna, is not that "bad" but is sent to a boot camp anyway by her somewhat insane parents. She makes friends with some of the girls she meets there, and enemies too. Then the book starts to become like Lord of the Flies with a Gossip Girl element when the camp falls apart and Anna has to run or fight. Some readers might find it somewhat scary or disturbing, but I could not put it down.

Feeling they have lost control as their sixteen years old child Anna continually defies them and breaks all their rules, the religious Wheelers turn to a radical solution. They hire "soldiers" from Camp Archstone to abduct their daughter and take her to a remote Bahamas Island for several weeks of boot camp. Anna thought her parents were too strict, but they seem permissive as she lives in a survival camp run in the strictest of military styles; insubordination leads to harsh punishment from the in your face 24/7 staff.

Anna fears her bunk mates whose behavior seems over the edge past sanity. However, her terror turns to outright horror when on a forced several miles hike up the mountain someone kills the leader; the others react just as frightened. Everyone panics with the girls fleeing into the jungle while deviant drug dealers pursue them with plans to rape and then kill the teens. To Anna the biggest fear remains her violent bunk mates who cannot understand teamwork is the only way to save their lives.

BAD GIRLS is a heart pumping thriller that never slows down from the moment that Anna is abducted with the concerned unsure consent of her parents and never slows down until the final tropical jungle feverish confrontation. The story line feels like a gender bending Lord of the Flies crossed with female prison movies like The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage. Still this is an adrenalin action-packed tale with the audience rooting for Anna to survive her ordeal.

Harriet Klausner

To put it simply: This book was amazing. It combines drama/comedy/and suspense. I couldn't put it down and ended up reading the entire book in a day. I thought that the characters all seemed very real and easy to relate to. Anna, the main character, was sent to the wilderness camp because she was a 'bad girl', but as the book goes on you find that she's really just a normal teen who has made some mistakes. When the girls are lost in the wilderness to fend for themselves they have to pull together and trust each other if they want to survive. As you get farther into the book the girls stumble across some eccentric (but not necessarily nice) characters. I do wish that the book would have had more of a closure saying what happened to the other girls when they were left to themselves. I suppose the author did this as to leave that up to our own imagination. 'Bad Girls' is definatly worth reading.

Anna Wheeler is a bad girl. After her abortion she became nothing more than an embarrassment to her super-religious, christian author of a father. One night as Anna come back from partying with her boyfriend, stoned and drunk, she is taken from her home, and with her parents approval, sent to a girl's wilderness camp in the bahamas. This camp, Camp Archstone, is full of other girls with problems like or worse than Anna. One has stolen over $25,000 worth of electronics. Some girls, like Anna, just had drug and drinking problems. Then there is Kara. Kara is a blond beauty who happens to have an obsession with seeing other people in physical and mental anguish. Before she went to Camp Archstone, Kara was responsible for making a girl go to a hospital for the mentally insane. At their second day at camp, Anna is forced to go on a twenty mile hike. On the hike, they got unexpectedly shot at by drug dealers. The girls scatter and they are lost within a gigantic jungle. Anna and some other girls must find their way to civilization before they get shot by drug dealers or die of starvation. This book is a interesting survival story filled with suspense and is reasonably believable. I recommend it for girls in their late teens interested in realistic fiction.

Teen girls will be like this book the most because they will be able to relate than anyone else to the main characters. Anna's resentment at her parents for sending her to Archstone will be more understandable to a teenage girl than, say, a grown man. Teen girls will also understand some of the girls behavior more. One girl, against her best interests, continually asks questions and tries to irk one of the camp's "councilor." She gets sent to a solitary confinement box.

This book is very suspenseful. The author uses lots of foreshadowing techniques to increase suspense. After the hike turns terribly wrong, one girl, who was sitting apart from the others, disappears. There are also lots of twists, some of the people who you would naturally think would survive, because they are the main supporting characters, have awful things happen to them. One gets shot by a drug smuggler after she tries to run away, the other breaks her leg trying to cross a river.

The author did a nice job of making the book seem as possible as he could. In Bad Girls, the author, Alex McAulay, had a very convincing setting. McAulay had the camp outside of the United States, so that the "councilors" would be able to use punishments that they wanted. One girl's punishment is to stand in the "heat box." The "heat box" is a tall, metal box that attracts heat. A girl has to stand in it for the day with no food or water, all they have is unbearable heat. McAulay purposively picked an island in the bahamas known for its drug problems, so the drug smugglers didn't seem at all random.

Bad Girls is an interesting book that would interest teenage girl. It is filled with suspense, survival, and teen drama. Convincingly set and told, this book will be an enjoyable read that you won't be able to set down.

I wasn't sure how to take Bad Girls at first. Right away we were put into the action; Anna Wheeler -an out of control sixteen year old girl- is running for what seems to be, her life. In the end, her attempt for freedom fails and she is thrown back into the hands of her captives.

While she rides off to her destination, we learn what was brought Anna into her current situation. Back in Georgia, Anna had partied and stayed out late. She got high and drunk, and then had an abortion to top it off. It seemed like Anna's life couldn't be more out of control. Finally, we learn she is going to be sent to a "Wilderness Camp" called Camp Archstone to help change her into a respectable young women. This is -of course- the work of her over religious, former military man of a father, whom Anna couldn't have a worse relationship with.

Anna arrives at Camp Archstone and is given everything she will need at the camp. Things go along as planed in Archstone for the next day or so. It is a prison like camp, where the girls are treated like inmates and must endure gurling physical activities, while overcoming psychological problems as well. Then when a hiking trip goes terribly wrong, Anna and the girls she has met at the camp, must band together to survive in the wilderness of the remote Caribbean island that Camp Archstone is on.

Bad Girls drew me in right away. I was able to sympathize with Anna almost right away, even with her "bad girl" flaws. Yet, I couldn't help but feel by putting Anna and the other girls in Archstone, the author was only looking for a way to get these girls in the wilderness. After they run into the forest when someone is shot, Archstone is basically out of the picture. McAulay could have done a better job trying to weave Archstone into the story more, and make it more important in the second half of the story.

Anna and the other girls seemed to sit around a lot as well. Parts of the story seemed to lag when his happened, and you just wanted to move on with the story. Also at times, the story seemed to be pushing itself a little too much, that it was hard to take is seriously. When the story ended, it seemed so abruptly. There was no closer with Anna's life and the reader is left to guess what happens next. Will she tell her father the truth? What will happened to her photography teacher and does Anna clean up her life when she returns? What about Camp Archstone, does it remain open? These questions and more are left unanswered and makes you wish for just a few more pages in the book.

Overall, this a very enjoyable read. Having these spoiled high school girls try to survive in the wilderness is so intriguing, and you feel like your right there with them the whole time. It can creep you out but also make you cheer on Anna to survive in the end. There is also enough drama to draw the fans of Gossip Girl or other teen series in for the read. If you're looking for a quick read that you can't put down, this is something to pick up. While is might seem slow at times, it soon picks up and you're back in the wilderness fighting for your life.

Alex McAulay did a good job with this one. If only he had made the details flow better together and tied up the loose ends.

Okay, so this is probably like a strong PG-13, they use the f-word and talk about rape and sex and drugs, but I loved this book. HIGHLY recommended.

i had low expectations for this book only because the book sounds very typical: girl behaves bad, girl gets send to camp, girl suffers, girl changes herself...i was completely wrong.

this book is about a girl named anna, who was behaving really bad: got pregnant at 16, parties too much, hangs out with bad people. so her father sends her to a reform camp to change her.

one day they go hiking and in one second everything goes downhill. theres a crazy shooter in the forest, and yes some people dont make it. theres so much drama: first theyre out hiking, then someone dies, then theyre on their own...and so much more drama. i didnt think it could get worse but it did..it kept me at the edge of my seat.

this book was SO GOOD. i loved the characters. theyre all so different with secrets of their own, and in the end you find out just how loyal they really are to each other. do they help each other? or leave protecting themselves?

the ending was completely unexpected and kind of sad. this book does teach you a lesson: appreciate what you have. the girls went through such horrible stuff, it made me thankful that for what i had. i know its corny, but its true.

anyone under 16, i would not recommend it. theres a lot of foul language and explicit stuff going on. i personally liked those parts because it made the book better.