Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter (thoughts)

Summary from Goodreads:

"Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's husband is killed.

The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it."

My Thoughts:

This book was by far the darkest and most thrilling book that I finished in 2017!  It was so very intense and a complete page turner!  I picked this book up finally thanks my personal TBR challenge - it's the first book that I've read off of my list of TBR reads.  It was so unbelievably good and I'm kicking myself for waiting until now to read it!  I've now read three books by Slaughter and she has jumped on to my must read everything she writes list!  She definitely writes books that are on the darker side so they won't be for everyone.  They are my kind of books though as I couldn't get enough of this one!  I found myself completely immersed in this book from the very beginning.  The thing about reading it was that you just never knew what was going to happen next.  The author had me twisting and turning right along with the characters - I just couldn't stop reading because of it!  I found myself so immersed in this book trying to figure out what was going on!   And how it was all going to end - I just didn't want to stop reading.  I'm trying not to go into too much detail as I don't want to give anything away.  This is a book that you just need to read and experience for yourself!  The book begins when Claire's husband is killed which in itself is a pretty intense moment and literally doesn't stop from there.  I'm just basically gushing at this point but it was just that good!

Overall, this book easily ended up on my top reads list for 2017 as I absolutely loved it!  Not sure exactly what that says about me considering the subject matter and how dark the book was but there you have it.  This is one of those thrillers that I won't be forgetting about any time soon.  It was intense and heart pounding but just oh so good!  I'm really glad that this challenge finally helped me to pull this one off of my TBR list.  It's been on there since August of 2015 according to Goodreads.  Yikes!   I would recommend this one to fans of thrillers and mysteries a like.  Just be warned that there is some difficult subject matter and that this is an author not afraid to pull punches with her main characters.  Highly recommended!

Bottom Line:  Heart-stoppingly good!

Disclosure:  I received a copy of this book thanks to the publisher and NetGalley - my review copy expired a long time ago so I read a library copy.