Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Pretty Girls

wowza, that was intense. and super fucked up. also incredibly heartbreaking.

definitely be mindful of the content warnings before jumping into this one, but in all honesty it didn't seem any better or worse than, like... an episode of criminal minds or law & order. (then again, i did read the slob so maybe i'm just desensitized to reading about violence.)

but the heart of the story is the fractured relationship between two sisters - claire and lydia. i was super invested in both their POVs as they navigated the mystery of their eldest sister's disappearance together. sam's letters to julia broke my heart. the grief and being unable to move on due to lack of closure was done super realistically in this novel.

as for the actual mystery part, it was... meh? as i've stated in other reviews, i am (unfortunately) incredibly good at predicting things so 60% of the plot twists i had pretty much already guessed, but again, i was really intruiged by claire and lydia's story together, so that really kept me frantically page-turning to see what would happen next.

overall, i really enjoyed this book. the graphic violence against women was a little excessive though, i'll admit.

Content Warnings

misha_ali's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This was my first Karen Slaughter (what a great name for writing in this genre) and I went in expecting a lot of torture porn (the book is about snuff films, the reviews mention it frequently as well) but honestly, there isn't as much gratuitous and explicit torture and sexual assault as I braced myself for, which is a good thing!

This started off promising enough for me with rich characterization, a couple of women who are clearly connected in some way and we'll get to peel back the layers of how, and a shocking murder. The bad news is that this very quickly veers off into a very lacklustre mystery that honestly doesn't offer much by way of twists since it's not exactly unique in its evilness.

The villain(s) are also underdeveloped or at least not revealed as particularly developed, as well. In skilled hands, a character that is so two-faced that they have a perfect facade to everyone in their lives and a second, truer face that reveals their true depravity is interesting but when we just have secondhand accounts and not much exploration, this just sounds like disjointed characterization.

There is a LOT of wasting time with the character that surprisingly not feeling any urgency and not in direct danger, which slows down a significant part of this book. Honestly, the whole last 40% was a bit of a slog, which is a bad sign for a mystery/thriller.

TL;DR: A decent start but loses stream part of the way through and not a strong finish.

Content Warnings