book review: Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

blurb:

Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.

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.

The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.

my questions, comments, and concerns:

trigger warning (rape, violence, torture of a sexual nature, emotional abuse, kidnapping, drug abuse) Any trigger warning I can think of can be applied to this book, I strongly suggest you reading reviews of this book before you decide to read it. I didn’t.

(without spoilers)

holy fuck. Y’all. This book is easily the most gory/disturbing book I have ever read/listened to. This time around, I was more prepared to write this review. I’d set aside a notebook and paper so they would be ready to catch my commentary as I went through the novel, and I’d attached a long list of sticky notes to my bookcase in case I wasn’t near my notebook, so I could run and add my thoughts to it wherever I was in the apartment.

This was not the book for me to be dissecting and ruminating on. The violence that was perpetrated against countless young women in this book curled my insides. I was unprepared for it. The brutality that was unleashed between the pages was not only scary, but scarring. There is a line “You can’t unsee the images” and it matches perfectly with the scenes that I envisioned while reading. I can’t rewind the clock and unimagine what I did. I felt dirty when I closed the book for the final time.

The author, Karin Slaughter, is talented no doubt. And her impressive writing almost makes the story worse. You aren’t pulled away from the scene with choppy sentences or poor imagery. You are there in the room when savagery happens. You feel the evil. As I was reading, I scribbled down the question “what the f*ck is wrong with this author? How did she come up with such a vile antagonist?” and from what I read on her comment on goodreads; it all came from a dream. Nightmare seems like the more appropriate word choice.

Without giving anything away, I can really only reiterate my original warning. This book is not for the faint of heart- if you can’t watch the Saw movies, you can’t read this book. You will be scared and you will wonder how many people are this evil in our world. It’s horrifying to think that anyone could be as bad as the bad people are in this book. To imagine a real-life version is terrifying.

SPOILERS (expand to read some snippets of this nasty ass book)

I’m glad Paul is dead. My only regret is that he didn’t suffer more. I wish that he could had lived to suffer, to watch Claire put her life together without him. To thrive without him. I don’t know what else would hurt him more. I worried during the scene where Lydia and Claire were torturing him that he was getting off on the pain. The detective, Paul’s father, the senator, and everyone else involved in this sex trafficking/torture ring all need to be put to death. It is unnerving to imagine the systems of people who partake in sh*t like this IRL… it makes me want to vomit. To imagine myself as Lydia when he was waterboarding her with his own urine made me sick, when she asked for the Percocet I was heartbroken. But I do not blame her for her choice. I would have done the same thing in her shoes, I’m sure of it. I am sure that I would have taken anything offered to numb not only the pain, but the humiliation and rage. Slaughter made it easy to have a visceral reaction to the words on the page (or as I experienced, being spoken to me). Looking back on my notes, I had made a list of things that I wanted to look at after the conclusion. But now after having time away from it- I have no interest in coming back.

That concludes this book review! Thank you for coming along with me and please let me know if you end up reading 'Pretty Girls' (I need a buddy to discuss), or let me know what you're currently reading in the comments below!