Hey there, book lovers!
Well, it’s officially April, the sun is (sometimes) shining and the daffodils are in full bloom! I can see the alfresco drinks and wearing my sunglasses as a headband already! So here I am, with one of the least cheerful books I’ve ever read to share with you today – sorry in advance.
A group of my bookstagram girls decided to get together to buddy read this book, ‘Pretty Girls’ by Karin Slaughter, because we’d heard it was one of her best thrillers. I’d never read anything by her at all, so I thought, why not?! You know I love a good thriller, after all. We read it over a week, which was a bit intense – it’s quite a lengthy book and the chapters are ridiculously long – and by the end, I felt like I’d spent a week watching a marathon of the Hostel films. Let’s find out why…
What is ‘Pretty Girls’ about?
I’ll try to be as diplomatic as I can here, but you tell me if this storyline sounds a tad far-fetched… Claire, our protagonist, is still struggling with the mystery of her older sister who went missing twenty years ago. The police decided she must have run away, but Claire, and her other sister Julia who no longer has anything to do with family, are convinced there should have been more of a thorough investigation.
One day, Claire is leaving a bar with her husband Paul, when he pulls her down an alleyway and starts aggressively having sex with her. They’re interrupted by a mugger, who then murders Paul right in front of Claire. When Claire returns home after the funeral, her home has been coincidentally broken into and there is a suspicious policeman and FBI agent sniffing around. As soon as Claire gets a moment to herself, she does her own snooping and discovers some horrifically violent torture porn on Paul’s computer.
What follows is what I can only describe as the most wildly unrealistic, excessively gruesome amateur investigation I’ve ever read, as Claire and Julia team up to uncover Paul’s deepest secrets and potentially get closer to the truth about their missing sister.
Should you read ‘Pretty Girls’?
As you’ve probably guessed by now (if you’re as good a detective as Claire) this was not a winning read for me. First of all, the story itself was just too chaotic. It seems to be all over the place, yet going nowhere at the same time. Add that to its overly long chapters and this did not make for a page-turning novel. I also just felt as though the plot made very little sense in terms of realism. I know it’s a thriller, and appealing to our more melodramatic side, but honestly, every stone they turned, every secret they uncovered just had me rolling my eyes in disbelief as it became more and more unbelievable.
Now let me talk about the torture porn elements I mentioned earlier. I’m really not one for this kind of horror or thriller. It just makes me feel uncomfortable, and that’s not what I read for, especially when I feel like it’s being done purely for the shock factor, rather than because it adds to the story in any way. In essence, I feel like it’s a bit of a cheap way of writing.
All that said, I did finish it, so there must have been something I was enjoying, right? Well, what I did find interesting was the number of suspicious men involved: from the old local policeman who’d worked on their missing sister’s original case, to the inappropriately flirtatious FBI agent, to Paul himself. I did work out the ending of the novel relatively early on, but I have to say, I didn’t guess which of all these men were genuinely helpful and which were the truly dodgy ones. So at least that kept me somewhat intrigued!
Final thoughts
All in all, an overly gruesome thriller that was about 200 pages too long, but with a handful characters that will keep you guessing.
⭐️⭐️
Back soon!
Bookish Blonde x
Bookish Blonde 