Will I love Pretty Girls?

Usually, this isn’t my kind of thriller.

I struggle with passive heroines, and Claire drove me a little crazy at first—so removed, so unaware, so unwilling to look too closely. But I stuck with it, and I’m so glad I did.

I loved Lydia immediately (that first scene alone told me exactly what kind of energy she was bringing), and I enjoyed how the story shifts into something that belongs to the sisters, not the man at the center of it.

What really worked for me is the turn—when Claire stops drifting and starts choosing, and the two of them… show more.

This book is not for the faint of heart, there are trigger warnings a mile long and it is one of the most gruesome books I have ever read and yet like a car crash, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the book.

I listened to it on audiobook and the narration of the story added to the thrill and terror of it all. 

I’m a huge fan of Slaughter, both her Will Trent police procedurals and her stand-alone thrillers, which are deliciously dark and propulsive.

This novel goes deep into some shadowy corners of existence with its story of Claire Scott, an Atlanta woman who’s confronted with a shocking personal tragedy in the opening pages when her husband is murdered in front of her.

Compounding her devastation, Claire stumbles upon ugly secrets of her husband that help her solve the decades-old disappearance of her believed sister Julia. It’s impossible not to admire Claire’s resilience in the face of the horrors she uncovers and… show more.

Slaughter is one of the best storytellers I’ve read in the last ten years, and Pretty Girls is her gold standard. The thriller, which is a complex tale about the unsolved disappearances of teenage/college girls, opens with the author’s trademark: a brutal, graphically-written scene. Here, it is the fatal stabbing in a back alley of Paul, a brilliant, rich architect. The murder is witnessed by his wife, protagonist, Claire.

After the funeral, Claire is faced with a series of mystifying discoveries on Paul’s computer which suggest that her loving, perfect husband was involved in making snuff videos for a torture… show more.