Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Pretty Girls

Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

45 reviews

shreeyukta's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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lilifane's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, this is an extremely well-crafted book, the writing and plotting are exceptional, the character work is amazing, the story is intriguing and thrilling and emotional. But on the other hand, there are really graphic description of violence, rape, and torture. I was disgusted and sick to my stomach. But then again... that was probably the point. I mean, I would be worried if someone wasn't affected by reading those scenes. So if you consider reading this book, please look up the trigger and content warnings. There is a LOT.

So, except for these scenes, I really enjoyed the book. There was actually a perfect balance of humor, emotions, mystery, and horror. The twists the story took gave me whiplash, and I was terrified for the characters. The thing that stood out to me the most were the family dynamics, though. Between parents and parents and their children, but especially between sisters. Those were so realistic and complicated, and I loved it. It reminded me so much of me and my siblings.

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caitlin1066's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

I was really looking forward to reading this book after what I’d heard about it. I’m a fan of dark stuff that puts you on the edge of your seat and, whilst the content was extremely distressing, I still felt it fell a little flat for what I was expecting. I think it could have been a lot more creepy and tense than it was. However, it was still an enjoyable read. To summarise, it is the story of two distant sisters who come together when one of their husbands gets murdered. However, both sisters are still not over the disappearance of their sister which caused their father to commit suicide before the book commences. When investigating the murder of Claire’s husband, they find out some very worrying things about his life that he kept hidden from her. Would recommend if you’re into crime novels.

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perplexed's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

2.25

Once again I'm coming in with a really torn review

I will say now that there might be some spoilers in this review, and I'll flag them, but proceed with caution. Also TW: I reference SA and violence in this review

There were elements of this book I loved. The whole idea of "how well do you really know someone" is a trope I love to see explored, and this book started off doing that really well. I also really loved the main characters, Claire and Lydia, and part of the reason I finished the book was because I wanted to make sure they got out of their shenanigans okay.

I call it shenanigans because why wouldn't you get law enforcement involved, like surely if the FBI was there you'd be like hey so uh there's all this shit happening with my husband, here look at these videos, please help. Totally get the whole police and criminal corruption thing, but Fred Nolan was very obviously not involved with that (his interview with Claire later on in the book clearly showed this I think

That being said, so much of this book felt like gratuitous detail. I get that you want to make it clear how brutal something is, but you could get that without needing to graphically describe acts of SA and torture. I love body horror and gore, but the repeated graphic descriptions were *a lot* and I really recommend giving this book a skip if you're effected by any of the trigger warnings mentioned on these reviews.

Also, shout out to the fact that either Claire or Karin Slaughter thinks that TOR is an illegal file sharing site. Very much legal, it's just a browser like Google Chrome but it doesn't track you, so I think TOR is actually the real good guy in this book.

PS. Dad if you're reading this hello, please don't judge me for the books I've been reading recently, I've been on a kick of gross books ever since American Psycho but none seem to scratch the itch of violence with a message and they've all just landed on gratuitous violence instead :-( onto a Christmas romance novel next though so, bet you can't wait for that review!

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