Pretty Girls

⚖The case for it

The violence is extreme and unrelenting from the start, more than some readers will want to sit with. If that closes the book, fair enough. What Slaughter refuses to do, and most crime writers will not, is treat a murdered woman as scenery; the sister who vanished twenty-four years ago is an absence the two who remain have built their whole lives around. Their father's grief-stricken letters to the daughter he never found are the quiet, aching center. The plot does lean on a few contrivances too tidy for real life. You keep turning anyway, because the wound between these sisters is drawn with care the genre rarely brings.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Slaughter tests how much sadism a reader will sit through: snuff films, a kill room, a dead father's journal spelling out atrocity in patient detail. The violence against women is both engine and cargo. And the twists demand a conspiracy that has run flawlessly for decades without one leak.

— the honest librarian