"Lois and Carly-May are just twelve years old when they're abducted, driven across the country, and imprisoned in a remote, isolated hunting lodge for two months. That summer, under the watchful gaze of their kidnapper, they form a bond which will never be broken . . .
Decades later, both Lois and Carly-May have built new lives and identities for themselves. Lois, a professor of literature, is shaken when an obsessive student reminds her of the man who kidnapped her, a man she saw shoot himself on the porch twenty years before.
Out in LA, Carly-May is drinking too much and watching her beauty-queen looks fade, clinging to the last remnants of a once-promising career as an actress. When she reads a shockingly familiar screenplay, she warily she takes a role she knows is based on events from her own life.
Increasingly haunted by the devastating experience that shaped both their lives, Lois and Carly-May are drawn together again in a world that both echoes and falsifies their beautiful, terrible story."
On finishing this book my general feel about it is that although it was a very enjoyable read, it was weirdly unsatisfying. I liked the characters, I liked the premise and it is very well written but it just felt like there was no clear cut resolution at the end of the novel. Now, this doesn't detract fro the storyline at all, I really did enjoy the book, but the vague ending was not something thatI personally liked. Maybe I was waiting for a dramatic twist or something, but it never really came and for that reason this book didn't blow me away.
A lot of the events that take place in the book are left largely to be interpreted by the reader, which I found to be a clever way of doing things, but also slightly exhausting. It's a book that I have to keep thinking about, turning over questions in my mind as to why certain characters had done certain things, and I have to confess to being a somewhat lazy reader - I don't mind pondering certain character traits or actions but I don't like to be made to WORK at the storyline.
It sounds like I didn't like this book but I did, I really did. There are some brilliantly complex characters that the author allows to delve right into, and the storyline is very, very good. It's just perhaps the wrong read for the the Christmas holidays when I am feeling even more lazy than usual!
Pretty Is is out now and you can get it here:
**My thanks to the publisher for my ARC**
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