I am not sure I can put into words just how great of a writer Karin Slaughter is. Like all of her books, Pretty Girls had me hanging on every word. Her characters and plots are extremely well developed. Her descriptions of my hometown of Atlanta make me feel like I am back there again.
Cop Town, Slaughter’s last standalone novel was a very dark book. Pretty Girls is a hundred times darker and intense. Slaughter shows just how depraved people can be with an unflinching eye. She is certainly not afraid to touch topics that most writers wouldn’t dare write about.
Paul is a frightening character. He shows a perfect side to Claire and his business associates but underneath that calm exterior is a violent psychopath. Paul is the scary stranger on the street that you would never guess was a murderer.
The aftermath of Julia disappearing and what happened to the Carroll family was heartbreaking. Lydia succumbs to drugs. The parents get divorced. Claire ends up disowning her sister. Every time a body of a young woman is found, every member of the family wonders if it’s Julia.
Pretty Girls is a chilling novel about serial rapists and killers. It’s a heart pounding, fast paced story that will keep you reading for hours on end. Anyone who enjoys thrillers or criminal fiction should read this book.
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About the Book:
Title: Pretty Girls
Author: Karin Slaughter
Release Date: July 2, 2015
Publisher: William Morrow
Category: Criminal Fiction /Thriller
Source: Borrowed from the Library
Book Summary:
#1 internationally bestselling author Karin Slaughter returns with a sophisticated and chilling psychological thriller of dangerous secrets, cold vengeance, and unexpected absolution, in which two estranged sisters must come together to find truth about two harrowing tragedies, twenty years apart, that devastate their lives.
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.
