Jaderade

Ahhh yet again. A perfectly delicious spicy book gets ruined by the imminent pregnancy trope.

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.

DNF - 20%

It’s likely that this is a fantastic YA novel that has well thought out characters with depth and a solid plot line. However. The whiney infantile voice the narrator uses when portraying the spoken lines has shoved iceshards into my spinal cord and made me viscerally cringe. Listen at your own expense.