Member Reviews
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of Such a Pretty Smile
This was an interesting read and not what I'm used to, but that's why I love NetGalley. I had not expected the horror component and must have forgotten when I read the description of the book, what it was about. The book grabbed my interest and attention right from the 1st page, it did get to a point where I thought it was going to become too gruesome and gory for me to read.. But it did not go past that point and I was able to read the rest of the story.. And I did enjoy it. this novel is about a mother and daughter, and is told in the present and the past tenses. Lila is a 13 year old girl present day and her mother Caroline keeps her extremely sheltered, as the story unfolds we find out why she does not want her daughter to be out of her sight. Caroline's past unfolds every few chapters as we read about her experiences as a young adult living with her fiancee
I must say this was well written, and the author has used her imagination to write in such detail that we feel as if we are part of the story and seeing things as they happen.
I will read more by this author
Source of book: NetGalley (thank you!)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
I admired this book more than I liked it, but that really is down to personal taste because this is a genuinely polished and impressive piece of writing, and the last thing I want to do is make the book a victim of my decision to read more widely. It’s as tautly structured as a thriller, woven around a dark coming-of-age story, with horror elements that were sufficiently, err, horror-ey that I had to stop reading it in the dark. Though, of course, the true horror here is the patriarchy.
The basic setup here is that the book jumps between 2004 and 2019, uniting the story of 13-year-old Lila, struggling with her identity and being 13 in a small town, with that of her artist mother, Caroline, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2004 when she started seeing shadowy dog-men figures and hear the snarling of dogs. Further bridging both timelines is a serial killer, known only as The Cur, who preys on young girls, leaving only their brutally torn-up bodies behind.
So, yeah. All the trigger warnings for violence, sexual violence, gaslighting, emotional manipulation, and sexual assault. As I say, this is a powerful book (especially in the current climate considering the bodily autonomy of people with uteruses is very much under scrutiny), that uses its horror elements very effectively to interrogate the mechanisms (social, familial, political, cultural, institutional) which we use to control women, and young women especially. It’s just, y’know, not exactly enjoyable, given the themes. The writing, though, phew. There are some passages that literally raised the hairs on my arms.
Ambitious, chilling, and timely.
I was unsure what to expect with this novel, and quickly found myself settling into the uneasy plot, wanting to not know more about these characters, but then of course delving further into their plight. This book is great for those wanting suspense and a lingering sense of fear for and of the main characters. In the end, the author does a good job of providing resolution and a sense of purpose for the characters.
I was granted eARC access to Such a Pretty Smile via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and chose to read it during 2021's run of the Spooktober readathon to fulfill the "read a slasher" task. My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
Such a Pretty Smile is a creepy, weird, and compelling novel that's hard to categorize. It's horror but it's also a bit urban fantasy or possibly dark magical realism. The concept of the same paranormal horror coming for both mother and daughter nearly 2 decades apart is fascinating, and I have a serious love/hate relationship with how the world passes it off as and convinces these women that they're suffering from mental illness.
With that said, it took quite a while to get a feel for which POV I was reading at any given point. Whenever we're reading the mother's POV we've travelled back in time to before the daughter's existence, just a little older than the daughter is in the present, and there isn't a whole lot of technology or pop culture mentioned in one time period or the other to really set them apart. If you don't have the names straight yet you're relying on the differences between these two characters are individuals, and frankly they're extremely similar. 2019 Lila and 2004 Caroline are pretty much the same person. I found the flip-flopping to be very disorienting, and if this wasn't the book I'd chosen to fulfill the last task for the readathon in the last week of the month, I might have given up and DNFd about 25-30% in.
I'm glad I pushed through because eventually I did get used to who's who and enjoy the mystery. The ending was somewhat satisfying in terms of getting an answer as to what the heck has been going on with these women the whole time, but (without getting too specific to avoid spoilers) we also get a huge deus ex machine character introduction right at the very end to help tie up strings that left me feeling like the majority of this book didn't have to happen if certain characters had found each other much, much earlier. Like 2004.
Overall I'm calling this a 3.5, rounding up to 4 for Goodreads and retailer sites because I do think it deserves props for being rather unique. Also, once again not going to explain myself due to spoilers, but if others who've also read this book come across this review please let me know whether or not you agree there seems to be a loose cicada inspiration here. I hope other readers who've finished will get that.
Before I even get anything helpful out in a review, I gotta say I really enjoyed this. Very unputdownable. Such a Pretty Smile grabbed my attention right away and didn't let let up. Knocked off a star (maybe half a star) because there was a bit of a jolt into a slightly too heavy metaphor, but honestly? It still worked for me.
Thirteen year-old Lila is in that sticky spot a lot of us are in at that age: grappling with peer pressure, frustrated with her divorced and preoccupied parents, and trying to figure out what to do about her big ol' crush on her best friend. Instead of melting into the Atlanta heat and wading through the minutia of middle school, Lila's life is turned upside down after a seemingly innocuous night with said best friend.
After leaping 15 years into the past, we meet Caroline, who will become Lila's mother. To Lila, Caroline is busy and fragile. Impossibly cool to everyone in the Atlanta art world. Mysterious to her own daughter. Before Caroline became Lila's mother, she was caring for an ailing parent in their home city of New Orleans, fumbling through a relationship on the decline, and struggling to find herself.
Neither Lila or Caroline have any idea what's in store. In both past and present, girls are dying. Disappearing. Being murdered. And no one can quite figure out why. Even worse, something is wrong with Lila. Something beyond pure id is bubbling just beneath the surface. Something no one understands. No one even listens to Lila enough to try and understand.
Such a Pretty Smile is a genuinely creepy page turner where mother and daughter are fighting the constant uphill battle of being taken seriously and learning what it means to protect yourself. It rejects the concept of choosing your battles for the path of least resistance and urges you to choose to take what you need. Instead, build your community and use it to preserve your oral history. Don't allow yourself to be dismissed. Don't smile for anyone but yourself.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a digital ARC for review.
DeMeester is a virtuoso of modern Southern Gothic horror and her novel, "Such a Pretty Smile," is no exception. For female readers, they will be all too familiar with the visceral hurt of stories involving men who prey on women, of why they get away with it, of people in small towns who look the other way or who commit victim blaming and shaming and other atrocious behaviours. But this time, there are women who fight back--although that's perhaps simplifying what is overall a complex, multi-layered, dark and twisted narrative. Comparisons to Damien Angelica Walters' work and perhaps even broader ones like Gillian Flynn and the ilk of "Gone Girl" comparisons make sense, but DeMeester has a style all of her own and it's beautiful. The protagonist, Lila, starts reading about a place called Jazzland, which used to be a theme park in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina hit. Lila's mother used to live in New Orleans, and she's desperate to search for connective threads. It's about young girls and their impressionable natures, the implicit trust that of course their crush would never do anything to hurt them, the fawning, the belief that they could have a future, but also the reality that the fantasies of what could be almost never measure up to the harsh realities of these situations. It's also fundamentally about that instinct of "I knew I shouldn't have listened to my friend" but the social pressures of going along so that they don't have to reconcile the loss of the friendship even though in many ways, it's a toxic dynamic. Getting multiple points of view adds nuance to the story, particularly the sections with Lila's mother pre-Katrina in New Orleans. But just be forewarned, this isn't the sparkling, glittering New Orleans and French Quarter of Anne Rice's novels, or other young adult books set there that seek to sanitize the city or only focus on its glamorous, tourist attraction parts. No. The New Orleans in this book is visceral and dark. It is also a fundamentally white version of New Orleans, but nonetheless, it is grippingly told--more a Poppy Z Brite version of the city and its darkness. As well, the narrative focuses on unravelling for the reader what exactly happened to cause so much trauma to Caroline, what happened at Jazzland, and other crucial questions that the book poses. Lila has to make the journey that she does, and although there is the air of tragedy suffusing it all, the reader understands this is the way things had to go. Some people don't like narrative switches of "Now" and "Then" and I think that as long as they're done well, I'm generally a fan. In this case, they're done well. I humbly suggest that showrunners involved with HBO hurry and snap up the rights for a screen adaptation of this novel as it's gritty, masterfully executed, and a reminder why Kristi DeMeester should be on every major award ballot this year.
wow, this is a modern southern gothic horror story that keeps you on the edge. Many thoughts on this & part of the message but mire on the way certain ideas seemed to have been drummed into & are still on the behavior expected of girls & women. Slow burn horror that is good
To start, I will say this book completely freaked me out and left me confused. I understand the allegory the book stood for, but the way it was presented still has me questioning who these people or things were that were kidnapping girls. I won't say much more without spoiling.
It started strong. We meet thirteen-year-old Lila who has her own secrets to keep, wants to learn to use her own voice and then is punished. While we're getting to know Lila, it bounces back and forth to 2004 and pre-Katrina New Orleans, where we get to know her mother, Caroline, and her back story. The book was certainly enthralling and mesmerizing; I couldn't put it down. But since I was left a bit confused (maybe it just went over my head?), it's more of a 3.5 star read for me.
Spoiler: if you're a dog lover, know going into this they are some very explicit scenes featuring the death of a dog. I wish I had realized it before reading it.
Mediocre read for me. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. This was my first horror read and I really liked it! I think the author did a great job of switching POVs so the reader can get the full story. The characters were very likable and I found myself rooting for them. I also really enjoyed the portrayal of struggling with mental health as an aspect of the horror. I would definitely look up trigger warnings for this book, as it can be very graphic at points, but I really really enjoyed this book.
I was given this book by NetGalley for an honest review -
Caroline is an artist who makes eerie sculptures made from twigs and leaves etc. Her daughter is 13 and can't share what she knows of the evil that is coming for young girls.
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Lila and her mother, Caroline have a secret, but its one that not even they know much about which just makes it al the more intriguing.
As readers, we have front row seats into a sinking madness as we time hop between Caroline's drift into madness as she struggles with outright denial, anger and frustration to Lila in current times who is embracing her changes with almost open arms.
These two women accept their challenges with different perspectives. One fighting it every step of the way until she is purely exhausted through and through. The other, a victim of her own circumstances, bullying, fake friends, fake emotions, welcomes the demonic hate that uses her as a puppet.
The descriptive nature of the beast is pervasive, I was chilled, I pulled my feet in under my blanket with unease. You feel for cold, the images burned in your brain so even closing your eyes doesn't help.
It leaves us wondering, if our true selves are really true, or a mask? Do the demons need us more then we need them?
A disturbing and creepy thriller about young girls who are taken and enthralled by a strange and evil force. The characters in the story are very believable and you will definitely find yourself fervently hoping that they will escape from the perils they are facing unscathed, and be shocked and upset when disaster occurs. I was on the edge of my seat trying to untangle the mystery of what exactly was going on, and I thought I was going to love this book all the way through right up until the very end.
While I enjoyed the book and could not stop reading it, I have to say that its ending felt off in some way. I'm not sure if it was how things were revealed, some element of the narrative, or what exactly threw me off, but at the end of the day I think what I needed was more backstory or explanation on what exactly was going on after everything was said and done.
Eerie, gory, mysterious, and with a slight touch of fantasy. So let me first begin by saying this is a story about a mother and daughter... and the thing that plagues them. The story is told in two timelines, in 2004 with Coraline and in 2019 with Coraline’s daughter thirteen year old Lila. The main mystery is what is happening to them and who this serial killer is that is around them. There is a serial killer named The Cur who kidnaps mutilates, and kills young girls, particularly young girls who do not obey and are not “good girls”. They had been doing it during Coraline’s time and now have resurfaced again in Lila’s tine. The Cur mutilates girls and has never been caught. On top of that Coraline is dealing with the possibility that she might be seeing and hearing things (in 2004), and now in 2019 Lila feel’s as if someone is talking to her and that she is seeing things. The story draws a slow connection between these two timelines and the events of both mother and daughter. Both having faced a mysterious man with the head of a dog and the body of a man... and voices in their heads. What’s real and what’s not starts to plague them, and unraveling the mystery might have consequences neither had anticipated. To be super honest, I got a bit lost reading this, the tone shifts from mystery to a disturbing fairytale, to family drama to growing up teen drama. I couldn’t really tack down the tone of the book since it kept shifting and while some parts pulled me some parts lost me, overall the story ends on a note that just left me saying “ huh, so it ended like that” I am still unsure about how I feel about this book. The story doesn’t necessarily commit to a tone and shifts between mystery, fairytale, and family drama, as well as being a young woman growing up. It was interesting and I would definitely recommend people check it out for themselves and see what they think.
*Thanks Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*
While I normally enjoy a good psychological thriller, this one just didn’t quite work for me. I found this to be a slow read. I ended up skimming a lot. I did not like any of the characters. While the story had promise, I didn’t care for the direction it took. There were some disturbing scenes, and with the reveal, I had more of a “huh” reaction than a shocked or surprised reaction. The ending was meh.
This book brings disturbing and graphic to a whole new level. I couldn’t even finish it, and I hate to DNF a book. I also read a lot of thrillers and psychological books, but this one was just deeply, deeply disturbing. Would definitely not recommend.
Hmmmmm... I was super excited to be sent a widget via email for this one! It looked right up my alley with darkness, gore, and just creepy vibes.
But, what in the heck did I just read?! I should have dnfed this book multiple times because I was skimming throughout the entire book.
So, there was a part in the book that was pretty disturbing.. .and let me tell I love my dark books but come on a thirteen year old and recent murder victim that her vag sliced in half and her nipples ripped off?!
The tone of this book was just awful. I feel like the author was going for a shock factor for the readers instead of a dark and creepy story.
And... the horror of the dogs issues in this one. NO... I was done.
Yikes... I cannot recommend this one and don't waste your time.
2/5 stars.
Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the arc in exchange for an honest review.
Pub date; 1/18/22
Published to GR: 10/31/21
Thank goodness for the rain....hours to read...and it is Halloween Eve🥺 This book is not for the faint of heart (Moi) It is a nightmare of delusions, which I would categorize as horror, but an ultimate thriller! Whatever you label it, just know it will get under your skin...it's creepy! The author is well crafted in how she wrote this multi-dimensional evil force. Some of the tension building was absorbing and disturbing, as if you are inhabiting all of the characters' minds.
2019- "There was blood in the water____ a dull pink bloom____the morning Lila Sawyer heard about the first missing girl." A serial killer "The Cur" has unleashed his fury on the hunt for teenage girls that are considered "troublemakers". He not only kills them, but he mutilates their bodies. Lila has a sweet desire and a pull to be bad without self control. She overhears her mom on the phone saying "It" has returned and history is repeating itself.
in 2004, Caroline, Lila's mom, had a foreboding feeling of what is to come. She is highly medicated for some grim occurrences. An artist in her adult life, she develops weird, dark art forms and encounters hallucinations. Now she has a daughter to be concerned with. "The girls fight against forces that try to silence them." It is unsettling and heart-stopping!
"For every mother who is haunted by what came before. And the two Js. Forever."
Be aware of the graphic content as some of it is very disturbing! It does have some anger issues in the teenage girls, but is crafted to build the tension.. Happy Halloween...SMILE and BEHAVE!!!
Thanks NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this eGalley in exchange for my honest review!
Thank you to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for providing an advanced ebook copy in exchange for an honest review.
I'm finding it difficult to put my thoughts on this book into any form of cohesive review. It was <i>weird.</i> I love weird as a rule, and as much as this was right up my alley, the ending plus the feeling that overall something was missing kept it from being a new favorite.
<b>The Plot</b>
This is a difficult one to summarize. Basically we have Caroline and Lila, mother and daughter, respectively. Caroline is our protagonist in 2004, while we follow mostly Lila in 2019.
In 2004, Caroline's dad is dying, she's experiencing what seem to be auditory and visual hallucinations, and her fiance is fiercely jealous of her far superior artistic talent. In 2019, Lila is wrestling with her own puberty, her shame over her sexual attraction to her best friend Macie, and a feeling that her body is sometimes taken over by a strange, malevolent force. In both storylines, young girls are being mutilated and killed by a serial killer called The Cur who seems to emerge every 15 years.
<b>The Good</b>
The first 95% of this is just so, so good. The writing is superb and deeply unsettling. Beyond all the monsters and gore, Such A Pretty Smile is a story about all the ways women silence themselves and make themselves small to keep at bay the anger and violence of men and <i>boy does it get that point across.</i> This book enraged me in the most intentional of ways.
Lila and Caroline are great characters and I found myself equally invested in both their stories. Caroline's sections were hard to read sometimes because of the way she shrank herself to accommodate men's egos, but that was the point. I loved Lila dearly and the mom in me just wanted to scoop her up into a bear hug of love and acceptance for most of the book.
<b>The Not-So-Good</b>
The only real gripe I have with this book is the ending. (No spoilers here, only vague explanations of my thoughts.) In the last 5% of the book, the big bad, who we don't know is the big bad until this moment, comes out and monologues about his whole history and why he does the things he does. Then the ending happens quickly and we're treated to an epilogue of sorts which is made up almost entirely of another monologue about everything that has happened in the 15 years since the ending. It was very meh after how unexpected and creepy the book was.
I think this could have been bigger as well. Not in length, but in scope. While I loved both Caroline and Lila as characters, the events that happened here effected So. Many. Other. Women. I would've loved to follow more of them than just the two (and a half, kind of) that we saw.
<b>Overall this was a great read</b> that I would recommend to any fans of adult horror with a stomach for gore and an interest in reading about female silence and rage.
There are boogeymen out there looking for good girls gone bad, so they can kill and satisfy themselves. They strike every so many years like IT would do to get their share, rejuvenate themselves and put fear in every mothers’ hearts. This is a story of those boogeymen and their victims. I don’t know how I can go forward without really giving away spoilers, but I’ll try my best!
When I think about boogeymen, I don’t think about some mythical creature, some monster. I think about grown white men that have good status in the society, that earned everyone trust, that people assume they can do no wrong. Who got killed by boogeymen and who got to be released after attacks has a big significance in this story. It’s not the good ones, but one the ones who said yes to mental abuse got spared if you can call that sparing.
I’m still trying to decide if this book is an allegory of our society today where “powerful” and “mighty” get what they want and live rent free in poor people’s mind with all that fear. Or is this just a scary story, a nod to history of New Orleans? Maybe you read and help me decide?
Okay so this is one of those books that your sort of confused by...like the two points of view are bouncing back and forth and also bouncing back and forth between time periods....but you also have to keep reading it because you just have to know what is happening.
You think the characters are nuts and you think you know what's going on like something fantastical is coming...but I still don't know what the heck the thing was! And it sorta never resolved. But that's not stopping me from liking it either. I'm not even sure how I feel about it. But I read it in on sitting...I couldn't put it down.