Provocative ... Full of broken and deeply unhappy people, denial, and secrets that contribute to a tension-building past mystery. Those seeking stories of female coming-of-age and how experiences of sexuality and death can shape teenage girls into the women they later become will find much to explore in The Ophelia Girls.
Healey skillfully weaves together the past and present in The Ophelia Girls ... There’s a feverish intensity to The Ophelia Girls that mirrors the drama of adolescence. It can be a bit much at times, especially a rush of revelations that come toward the end of the novel, which help explain away some characters’ choices in a way that’s not entirely satisfactory. But on the whole, Healey’s second book is a compelling meditation on what it means to be a girl, and a woman, in a world that often wants to define that in a narrow way.
Healey captivates with a dark and sensual novel ... Imagery of drowning and of natural cycles of bloom and decay suffuses Maeve’s narrative and Ruth’s flashbacks—and can feel overdone—but Healey excels at probing her characters’ psyches ... In the end, this develops into a lush, seductive portrait of desire.
