My friend warned me that this book, Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter, was intense, but I think what she meant was disturbing. I’ve consumed a lot of media over the course of my life, whether it be print or onscreen, so I’d consider myself somewhat desensitized, but this book was kind of on a whole other level.
Not that it was necessarily a bad level, just disturbing in a way I wasn’t prepared for. If this is how all of Slaughter’s other work is, I might be putting a lot more distance in between reads. In this novel we are treated to three different perspectives. The first is in a series of letters from the father of Julia, a college-aged woman who went missing after leaving a bar who hasn’t been seen since. It’s clear her disappearance has dramatically shaped the rest of the lives of her family, but it was perhaps her father that was impacted the hardest. He did commit suicide eventually, after all. Other chapters are from the perspective of Claire, who lives a bougie life with her rich husband, Paul. Only, you don’t get too far of a peek into their lives when Paul is killed in an ally with Claire watching. This opens up her grief about her sister all over again. The final perspective is that of Lydia, the middle child who after living a really rough lifestyle for so long finally has it all together for her teenaged daughter.
The remaining two sisters have been estranged for a really long time and are brought back together after Paul’s death for vastly different reasons. Claire uncovers some unsettling things in Paul’s garage and on his computer, which makes her mad at not believing Lydia’s claim that Paul tried to rape her back in the day. Despite their animosity for each other, Lydia answers Claire’s distress call, and what the two sisters find from there is terrifying and obscenely disturbing. I’d like to say that what they find and what else they uncover seems extremely unrealistic, I know that it’s probably not. That’s both very sad and very scary. Regardless of all the horrors Claire and Lydia uncover, they are really able to find retribution and peace from the whole ordeal, but I don’t know how they don’t end up severely traumatized for the rest of their lives.
That’s all I’m willing to say about this book for fear of spoiling anything for those that want to check this novel out. I just hope I’m able to convey the monstrosities described in this book before you pick it up. This could be triggering for some people, and it’s also got me really curious as to how Slaughter came up with this idea in the first place. Who knows. I might read more of her work in the future now that I’ve got an idea of what it’s like, but it’ll be a good while before I do. You’ve been warned!