Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - The Girls

No lo he odiado pero me lo habían hypeado mucho y me ha dejado bastante indiferente. El tema sectas me interesa más bien poco y tampoco creo que la parte psicológica que sería la más interesante se desarrolle demasiado. Parece un poco un collage de escenas morbosas con un toque de coming of age que en realidad para mi gusto es la única parte que vale la pena de la novela. Mucha gente dice que no le gusta la voz de Evie pero a mi me ha parecido bien, solo me hubiese gustado que me contase una historia diferente. Las partes de adulta me sobraban muchísimo.

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sarahcolleen12's review against another edition

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dark reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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nirellis's review against another edition

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dark sad medium-paced

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

4.0

3.75 but I’ll round up for the sake of the writing.

This was a trip but the writing style was easy to read and filled with quotable lines and insights that made me think of my girlhood.

Not quite sure what to take away from this book but it was a good filler to read in between fantasy books and got me pretty spooked at times.

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sammiesshelf's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

This book fell incredibly flat for me. I was excited by the premise of a Manson-esque cult story, and the cover caught my eye, but I was greatly disappointed. One thing I believe contributed greatly to this was the perspective the story is told from. The narrator is Evie Boyd, a girl who spent the summer leading up to the murders with the cult. She was 14 at the time. However, when she is telling the story, she is somewhere in her mid to late fifties from what I gathered, so the tone you are left with is jaded and depressing. It seems as if her life sort of peaked that summer, so her whole vibe is just sad and lonely. This makes it so that you lose a lot of the illusion of the cult in the beginning. Immediately, Evie points out the faults at the ranch, even though she didn't pay much mind to them at the time. For me, this made it feel like I was just reading about a bunch of dirty (like literally don't bathe) scammers the whole time, instead of almost experiencing the way they use their charisma and "message" to pull people in. I think much of what I expect a cult book to be is sort of through the eyes of someone falling for the trap, not someone who escaped and is recounting it forty years later.

Additionally, there was a weird story going on in the present tense, which felt completely unnecessary. I think the author was going for some sort of parallel with the story of the cult, but it didn't really work and just made the book harder to get through.

Overall, the book dragged terribly and was very easy for me to put down. The only time I found myself reading more than thirty pages at a time was when I finally said "Oh my god I want to get this over with." An enticing concept, but sadly a poor execution.

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mariaviola's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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grboph's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

This was the first book I finished in 2022, and it was a very good one!! I have been very fascinated with cults recently, and this was a good deviation from a lot of the nonfiction things I have been using to learn about them (the cult in this book is clearly based on the Manson Family). Emma Cline is a wonderful writer, and it is somewhat hard to believe that this was the first book she ever wrote. I found Evie to be a very interesting character, and I think she had a good arc. The thing I liked the most about this book was that Evie felt very relatable, which was nice for me since I hadn't really encountered many teenage-girl characters like that in adult novels before. Then that scared me a little because I realized that maybe I could have fallen into something like Evie did if I had found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time when I was that age. I don't know if this was something Cline did on purpose, but either way, it made the book all the more thought-provoking. Overall, The Girls was a unique and engaging book and I enjoyed every second I spent reading it. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in cults or the 1960s as a time period, or anyone looking to read a unique story of any kind.

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