Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - The Shining Girls

I enjoyed reading this book but it wasn't a good book. It was funny where it should have been tense.

The shining girls suffers from the author being unable to choose what type of story she wants to tell. Instead of picking a narrative or theme or genra to use it uses a huge mix and doesn't really succeed with any of them.

The author as well has an obsession of telling us about every single character's sex life, even when it doesn't have any effect on the plot. It feels almost like a sexual grocery list when reading. I don't mind sex being in books or important to narrtives but it feels more like it's trying to sexualise murder victims than it does add anything to the story.

Another issue I have is that while the book has a diverse array of characters almost all the diversity is in the characters who are brutally murdered and only appear for one or two short chapters over the whole book. On top of that the author leans heavily into sterotypes for them, making it feel more like the diversity was placed in to add to the 'shock' value that it relys on heavily.

This isn't helped by the three main white protagonists being very unlikeable and boring. Kirby and Dan have a creepy romance that feels like padding through book, which doesn't get resolved by the end of the book. Harper (the serial killer) has the best sections to read but only because he is the worst serial killer ever, he gets caught and beaten up constantly.

My last note is that the book doesn't read like a well crafted narrative. It feels like you are slapped in the face with 'important' plot constantly but most elements get dropped or don't actually go anywhere. Even major plot points have this issue, by the end of the book there are no sastifying anwsers.

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unicorndave's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

The killing scenes are particularly brutal, as they are told from the victims' perspectives.

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kelseak96's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Really good! I struggle finding thrillers that aren’t cliche, where I’m actually invested in the characters, and that keep me guessing, and this book did a great job of that! Like others have said, there’s a lot about the universe, the House, the characters’ backstories that isn’t explained, but I think it’s done in a way which makes it feel like we’ve just met these characters or stumbled upon the House like any other stranger. Would absolutely recommend!

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purecomedy's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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ashley_elizabeth's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot

3.5

My expectations were quite low for this considering the degree of negative reviews I've seen. Color me surprised! While the pace was on the slower side for the majority of the book, I still found the story engaging and interesting enough to keep me invested. I was tasting flavors of Joe Hill's "NOS4A2" with the House and some characteristics of both Harper and Kirby, which I mean as a compliment as I absolutely adore Joe Hill.

I found myself a bit confused by Harper and how he came to be This Person doing These Things. We get a decent bit of his history and how he came to be in the House, but it doesn't quite feel like enough. I understand from the blurb by the author that the story was meant to focus much more on the victims rather than the perpetrator, but I think I would have liked a bit more of this backstory/character development.

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sonyareadsbooks's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.75

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sarah984's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I thought this was an intriguing premise for a book, a time-travelling killer and a magical house, but the final product disappointed me. We spend WAY too much time in the killer’s head and he's extremely boring if you're not into reading the same rant about how he hates women 400 times. The romance with Kirby and her supervisor is stupid and never really amounts to anything

(and in the end she STILL needs a man to save her!)

and the explanation for the magic behind the house’s time travel abilities is the absolute most boring one you could pick. The "blaccent" on a few of the Chicago characters is borderline racist parody. The other shining girls are all really interesting but when you finally get invested in them they die horribly so it feels a bit pointless. For some reason I thought this was going to be about Kirby trying to save the others, but it isn't.

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