5/5: Finished Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter. Yes, this is a very, very dark read. Reader beware of what you’re getting yourself into. Masterfully crafted and addictively compelling, I read this one straight through over the course of two days. I was shocked and saddened and repulsed but this is what you’re supposed to feel when reading thrillers that fall into the ‘very dark’ category. No spoilers from me, but if you’re the type of reader who isn’t squeamish about the deplorable underworld of humanity, Karin Slaughter really delivers with this one.
From the publisher:
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.
