Pretty Girls
Crime, Mystery, Thriller
HarperCollins
July 2, 2015
ebook
580
English
December 30, 2018 January 13, 2019
Twenty years ago Claire Scott's eldest sister, Julia, went missing. No one knew where she went - no note, no body. It was a mystery that was never solved and it tore her family apart.
Now another girl has disappeared, with chilling echoes of the past. And it seems that she might not be the only one.
Claire is convinced Julia's disappearance is linked.
But when she begins to learn the truth about her sister, she is confronted with a shocking discovery, and nothing will ever be the same...
About the book
The book is divided into long chapters and these are divided with mini-chapters (which are distinguished because they have Roman numbers) in which the father of one of the missing girls speaks to his daughter in the form of a letter.
The beginning is a bit slow, it isn’t clear who is the protagonist or what crime should be resolved or where is the police, but after a few chapters it begins to get clear and from there I began to appreciate it and wanting to continue even if it was late at night.
In the translated Italian version, I don’t understand why in chapter II the girl’s “letter” is not translated. It doesn’t change anything for me, I know English very well but who doesn’t know the language how do they understand?
The book begins with two narratives (three if you count the father’s one) then the two narratives coincide (and from here I started to like it) but the point of view is always only from one of the two protagonists even if they are together. What makes the whole thing unleash is the incident that Claire and her husband Paul endure at the beginning of the book, from here Claire realizes that her husband is not actually who he says he is.
I must say that at the beginning I agreed Lydia, Paul was evil and Claire was wrong. In the middle of the book, the case of the missing girls was solved and looking at the number of pages that I had left, I asked myself “and now? There are 200 pages left and the case is solved, what happens?”, of course there was a mini twist that I totally saw coming, but from here when Paul talked to his wife, I don’t know, the book is so well written that I wanted a reason for the negative side of Paul (because obviously Lydia wasn’t lying about him), but I almost wanted Claire to not lose him. This feeling lasted for a moment, because then I really thought about it and I knew that it was impossible to solve that nicely. So the author was good at creating this conflict in me, it had never happened that I didn’t want the bad guy to be bad!
I have a doubt, however, at a certain point Claire and Lydia called the old house of Paul’s parents and on the voice mail there was the voice of a man and a woman. Claire wanted to find this woman, but the she was never mentioned again so who was she? Did I miss any details?
I loved the book even if one of the protagonists is in danger (I don’t usually like stories in which the protagonist becomes a victim along the narrative), the ending is not surprising, but I have shed some tears.
I recommend this book to those who like psychological books with no investigation… for most of the book I wondered where was the police, because I thought it was a “detective book” (like the others from the author) but it isn’t!
