Friday, October 16, 2015




The Shining Girls/Lauren Beukes, 375 Pages/Scary Story, October Challenge

Have you ever read reviews for a title and encountered so many different opinions that you just had to see for yourself?  Meet "The Shining Girls" by Lauren Beukes.

You are introduced to Harper Curtis, who is presiding in Hooverville, a shantytown built by destitute people during the early 1930s, at the very beginning of the book.  He is our serial killer.  Curtis has found his motivation for eviscerating young women at a house where their names are written on a wall.  And here comes the kicker;  he can time travel by entering and leaving this house. That means that Curtis can kill women in the past, present, and future.   He finds this house after he kills a woman that is wearing a coat that has a key in the pocket.  Confused?  Have questions?  This might explain the conflicting reviews.

It's not that this book is badly written.  It's not. But it does fail to pull the complex timeline together, and leaves so many unanswered questions, that you feel unsatisfied in the end.  How does Curtis know which house the key is for?  Why are the names written on the wall?  How come when some people enter the home they time travel, and some don't? 

I'm giving this book 4 stars....no, wait, maybe 2 stars...ahhh 3 stars?




No comments:

Post a Comment