Jaderade

LIKELY SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK (the book too, honestly)

I’m giving it 5⭐️because I can’t think of the last time I was provoked into this much angst and shock. I’m not giving it 5⭐️ because of the acts portrayed in this novel. Seriously READ THE TRIGGER WARNINGS because I didn’t. I didn’t even read the book description prior to jumping straight in. That was a mistake.

I’m not even sure how to, or where to, or what to start with.

I wish I could go back to the person I was before I read this.

Karin Slaughter has such a generous writing style when it comes to all of the little, usually not relevant, surprisingly interesting details she puts in her novels. It really scratches something in my ADHD riddled brain. I’ve read several of her books and that’s the thing I keep thinking about. The details REALLY make the book (likely why I have such a fixation for Child’s JR series). However, I think i could have lived without some of the ones in this book. (Also, do we think KS is on a list of some sort? Because, there was obvious research done here. And while we are on the topic, is KS okay???? Her therapist has got to have a therapist of their own.)

This book was deeply disturbing. Wait, no, that’s not a meaningful enough word for it. (I’m actually having to rewrite this review as I switched apps to check synonyms that would be more impactful. Btw, any admin/it peeps: I’m going to send that in as a fix). Pretty Girls provoked such a visceral reaction at times, I thought I was going to be sick all over myself. This book got set down a lot for me to be able to attempt to process the vile deeds committed here. It speaks to your humanity on such a primal level. What is it that humans are capable of? A predator hunts for sustenance, a prey animal runs to save its life. Humans (and the lions of Tsavo, and apparently orcas) do it for sport.

And I think the scariest thing of all is that this could be you. Did you marry a man that rapes, slices, and electrocutes women? Did you fall in love with a man who humiliates, degrades, and beats all of these countless young women? Have you built a life for the past two decades with the man who tortures and kills these poor souls? Are you somehow complicit with the acts of this man who sadistically watches the end of all of these young lives? The lives of those who in their last moments are in an abyss of hopelessness and despair, terrified of what happens next, and praying to whichever god will listen to make this one the last? Will you become one of these poor souls?

Or will he tarnish you? At the end of things will you have blood on your hands that you can’t wash away?

To me it’s a decent stand alone novel. Just not enticing enough for me to want to read any of the others in the series.

This book really had the potential to be such a fleshed out story. I felt that it lacked so much backstory and depth; a problem that really could have been easily resolved. This is something that I would expect to be on a YA shelf somewhere.

LIBBY READER:DNF:SPOILERS:

While I am not qualified to speak on the prominent culture of this book, I am qualified to speak as a woman. I am very sad to say this book is filled with nothing but toxic characters who were very hard to connect with. As a work of fiction let’s all dive head first into some serious HAWT *spicy scenes*: for some this may be able to overshadow the clearly “twisted” plot that is ridiculously knotted.

(This next section will not be grammatically correct) From what I gather: Denise is dead — Denise was married to Jeff — Denise and Jeff have a daughter — Denise and Nadine were best friends — Jeff and Nadine were sleeping together — Jeff and Nadine have a son (he thinks he’s an involved father, a good father if you will, because he watches him on the weekends after he pawns his daughter off onto his dead wife’s mother for the weekend, oh and he pays for daycare) — Jeff is sleeping with a stripper Ménage — Nadine isn’t over Jeff and is jealous of the stripper - Ménage is horrid and calls Nadine on her landline mid coitus with Jeff and to pester her randomly pretending Nadine’s number is Jeff’s moms number — Menage wants to rob Jeff of his life insurance money from the dead wife Denise — Denise was also sleeping around with Greg before she died — Jeff hates Greg (from a distance, like a stalker) — Greg is married to..well her name is unbeknownst to Ecosia, Google, and myself. But is definitely married to a person not listed — Greg is trying to divorce his wife — Greg is so in love with dead Denise still — Greg is also sleeping with Naomi now — Naomi is trying to marry Greg to get all is money — Naomi is also attempting to *be* Denise (checks herself agains pictures of dead Denise so she has her hair/clothes/makeup exactly like her). . . . To each their own. I felt like a needed a reference manual and character list with a family tree diagram to keep up. This is very much toxic people being toxic to other people and is all twisted together. DNF at 45%