Pretty Girls

How it reads

Pretty Girls is thriller (family mystery thriller, specifically), and its dominant mood is dark. It goes to difficult places and doesn't look away. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in several locations, in the present day, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are family, loss and grief and secrets. In weight it sits in the middle: substantial without being heavy going.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is dark — no rescue, no neat bow. At 432 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.