Pretty Girls

Product Information

While it’s listed as a short story, Karin Slaughter’s Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes is more of a prologue to her latest novel, Pretty Girls. It’s just sold separately for some reason (coughmoneycough!). A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

holy exposition batman. I feel like I've just have this flood of information streaming into my head for the last few percents. It almost feels like this book will never end. I don't mean that in a bad way but there's just so much going on. After Claire’s husband is killed in a mugging-gone-wrong, she uncovers some dark things about her husband. And her sister is the only one who can help her get to the bottom of his vast mountain of secrets. On their way, they uncover an underground snuff ring, a conspiracy that goes ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP, and an FBI agent that seems to be doing his best Foghorn Leghorn impression. This is also a book with absolutely no fluff. You can't skim anything because you'll miss crucial elements or reveals. It's intricate and layered. This author clearly spent a great deal of time plotting out her story before writing it because everything happens for a reason, every piece of the story has a purpose, and by the end, they all fit together. One reason I'm always wary of thrillers is I rarely find them satisfying but this book gave every single answer to every single question. I'm a fast reader and will usually breeze through full-length book in an afternoon but it took me 2 days to read this (3 technically since I read the first 10% one night, and the rest over 2 days) because there was just so MUCH going on in it...You'll probably hear a lot about characters and the literary merits (ha ha, I hope!) but make no mistake--at its heart, this book is a thriller. There are lots of twists and turns and all the stuff that folks have come to expect from me. The only thing missing is cops. Not that there aren't cops in the story (because they usually show up when there's a crime) but the narrators are just two ordinary women who are thrown into extraordinary circumstances. The real question is whether or not they can rise to the occasion (or will they make it at all?) First, I'm going to share the blurb with you (because it was the blurb that made me want to read it): Offering a bit of further discomfort, after reading this book you might find some of these listens a bit disturbing After I was well into the book I started to realize that the gruesomeness might be too much for me. I was starting to skip over the descriptions (very graphic descriptions) and feeling quite bothered. Other readers may not have an issue with it but I just felt a bit overloaded with details of such horrific acts. I ended up having to skip over quite a few parts. I don’t know if you’ve managed to piece this together yet, but I read a lot. Good books, bad books, romance books, crime books, I don’t judge. Of course, I have my favorites. But I try to approach each book with an open mind. I don’t necessarily mind violence in books. Or misogyny. I don’t even mind if a book has sexual violence in it, as long as there’s a compelling reason.

Okay. WARNING: this book is graphically violent. It's very similar in to Criminal Minds or CSI in terms of the level if you want a comparison point.More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia’s teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's husband is killed. WOWZA! I thought this book was terrific. I worked for years in forensics working with serial killers, serial rapists, child molesters, etc. so I was not as "horrified" by the subject matter as some might be when they read this. Slaughter certainly did her research. I thought her deception of "bad guy" to be very realistic and spot on.

Fair warning, this book is very much a thriller and contains graphic moments of sexual content and violence. However, that's part of what makes it so enthralling within it's genre. I might be too much for some to handle but if you're up for it, I can't even begin to recommend this book enough. Oddly enough, the purest bits, the best and profound parts are the journal entries that dot the path of this terrible story. They are from a grieving father to the missing daughter he can never give up on. I read each one, grateful, because THOSE kept me going, pushing me to the end. chills and shivers again. How amazing is this writing?? I hate that I have to go to bed now because I want to keep reading!! The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Slaughter, Karin. Pretty Girls. HarperCollins, 2015. You couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing about the missing teenage girl. Sixteen years old. White. Middle class. Very pretty. No one ever seemed quite as outraged when an ugly woman went missing.”

Retailers:

Please be aware that the delivery time frame may vary according to the area of delivery - the approximate delivery time is usually between 1-2 business days. This was one of the hardest books to read that I’ve ever read. It has trigger warnings for pretty much any awful thing you can imagine like: violent rape, sexual assault, suicide, graphic violence, murder, torture, and at times I honestly wasn’t sure if I could stomach any more of it. But I was captivated by this writing and I couldn’t stop reading this book, I had to figure out how it would end. Because it certainly wasn't the torture porn and the third act that ratchets up everything to a lunatic finish. And next, I'm going to actually show you guys all my status updates now (NO SPOILERS) so you can sort of see what I went through while reading it... (haha, sorry, I can get a bit sweary sometimes)