Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Such a Pretty Smile

This book is really hard for me to review and rate. I really enjoyed the novel. Demeester is great at crafting an ominous background with tension that left me sitting on the edge of my seat. However, I must say that I didn't quite understand the ending. I felt like a lot of questions were left unanswered. I understand what Demeester was trying to say in this book. Commenting on social norms, sexism, and gender roles. I understand that the antagonist of the book is meant to reflect those themes, however it feels like there was something left to be explored. In the end, I enjoyed the book, and am very glad that I Read it.

Content Warnings

raychelbennet's review

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.0

This was a difficult book to read and it’s a difficult one to review. I have a feeling it’s going to be very polarizing. The idea is a great one. In 2019, Lila is thirteen years old and she has a lot of secrets. She has an immense amount of anger rising up, she might be seeing things, and the dark thoughts she’s having are starting to sound very appealing. Alongside this plot is the narration of Caroline from 2004. Caroline is Lila’s mother and she is a struggling artist under a lot of familial stress. She has started to hear dogs barking and to see a man with a dog’s face in the shadows. In both 2004 and 2019, girls have started going disappearing. The killer has the same MO: a young preteen girl goes missing and their bodies are later found with ravaged inner thighs. Police believe it is a serial killer who has started taking girls again that they simply call The Cur. Is the same thing hunting girls? Are Lila and Caroline both being hunted by something or are they just “crazy” unreliable narrators?

The plot and the message of this book are really powerful. Kristi DeMeester really masterfully handles feminine horror in a patriarchal society. Every event is related to what a woman should do, how they should act, and their position in society. It focuses heavily on both the internal thoughts of girls/women and how they are forced to project themselves to the world. The use of the almost omnipresent Cur can be read as a physical manifestation of the patriarchy that wants to consume the inappropriate behaviors found in young girls. All of this is amazing, 5 stars, incredible.

Where things get difficult for me is the books' use of imagery depicting violence against animals and sexual violence. I am never a fan of violence against animals but I can skip over a scene if I feel it furthers the plot. The violence here I felt was *extremely* heavy-handed and drawn out longer than necessary. I get its purpose in the narrative but it made my stomach churn.

The discussion and depiction of sexual violence can be important—especially in books that deal with feminist themes. As someone who identifies as a radical feminist and who 100% agrees with the message that I feel this book was trying to portray already, maybe I just was not the target audience for this. I cannot comfortably read books with scenes of sexual violence where I cannot skip them. In Such A Pretty Smile, the sexual violence that occurs is fully entwined in other events that would leave important plot points out if it is not read. This put me in an uncomfortable and potentially unsafe situation and I think that could be true for other readers. Additionally, the language described—while not the worst or the most graphic I’ve ever read—is almost overbearing. Again, maybe I was not the target audience because I did not need to see anything in a different light to understand DeMeester’s point.

Overall, I think this is an important book. I think it is a really important addition to the horror genre and Kristi DeMeester is going to definitely be an author to look out for. I just think this might benefit from a few content warnings, which I am trying to explain here.

Content Warnings

ataraxicbear's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Such a Pretty Smile by Kristi DeMeester is, uh, absolutely wild. I have no words for how dark and twisty and insane this book is. Basically what's happening is a bunch of prepubescent girls are going missing, and their bodies are turning up completely mutilated. No one has any idea what's going on and who this serial killer could possibly be. Eerily enough, they exactly match a string of cold case murders from 15 years ago. Everyone said it was The Cur, but no one actually knows what that means. The one thing we do know is that 12 year old Lila Sawyer is having some really dark and oppressing thoughts. Even worse, the reader knows that her mother, Caroline, had those same thoughts 15 years ago too... As we go through this book we are alternating between three perspectives: Lila 2019, Caroline 2004, and Caroline 2019. We slowly start to uncover what is going on in these girls heads, and why there are so many young girls disappearing.

Overall, I gave this book a 4/5 stars. Here's why:
I personally love dark and twisty books, so this was right up my alley! I loved the unique story line, the mysterious aspect, trying to figure out what the heck was going on, and the generational dilemma. My biggest issue with the book was the pacing in terms of alternating timelines. Sometimes we would go several chapters of one timeline before switching, and I wish they switched a little more often, leaving me with cliffhangers as I'm going through the book. The other issue I had is that in really high stakes fast paced scenes, I feel like the author missed some things and was unable to fully flesh out her thoughts. It felt skippy and that certain things would come out of nowhere. It just wasn't explained the best.

Content warning: this book is DARK. If you are bothered by any of the following, this may not be the book for you... body mutilation, sexual assault, paranoid schizophrenia, anxiety attacks, gaslighting, animal abuse, gore, violence, murder, child death, pedophilia

Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advance e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Content Warnings

ohhthehorrors's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

3.0

Content Warnings

butyougotmysoul's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

2.75

This book was supplied to me as an ARC from Netgalley.

I'm of two minds with this book. I feel like it relies on some tropes that I really didn't appreciate such as mental health being to blame for severe character flaws,

but then that turns around in the last two-ish chapters. For me as a reader with mental health issues I would have liked to see some other explanation.

I don't know. Maybe with time this book will grow on me, but I'm not keeping my hopes up. The casual fatphobia littered throughout also did not do this book any favors.

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