I loved the premise of Pretty Is, but in the end, the execution fell flat. Two girls are kidnapped in broad daylight by separately and voluntarily getting into a car of a man they don't know. They are held captive for two months. Years later, one is a professor, and one is an actress (just hired to play the detective in the movie version of her own kidnapping). The potential is there! I love books within books! Pretty Is will pass the time, but it's messy without a payoff. 2.5/5.

DNF at 42%. There's nothing exactly wrong, but the story and characters just didn't grab me at all, and I realized that I didn't care enough to keep going.

Maggie Mitchell's Pretty Is is part of the catch-up crew of books, ones that I was approved for an advance reader's edition years ago and unfortunately got sidetracked by life. Somehow, though, I come to these books exactly when I need them.

Carly May and Lois were just twelve years old when thy were kidnapped by a man they knew only as Zed, taken to the woods deep in New York State and held there for six weeks that summer. After their rescue, their families kept them apart to avoid the reliving of those memories. The closure that they both sought, therefore, was never found. Now in their late twenties, Carly May is now Chloe, a D-list actress cast in a star-making role in a book that is a suspiciously familiar story of two girls kidnapped and held in a cabin in the woods. The book it is based off of was written by Lois, now an English professor by day and pulp fiction writer by night. This event will push the two together again and force them to reckon with their past as they never have before.

This book was one hell of a thriller — a slow burn through some kindling until it puffed out without you noticing. It was fascinating to watch and follow, and I have mixed feelings about the ending. I wanted a clean resolution — who was Zed, what were his motives, why did he take those specific girls — but we are only left with the same clues as the girls and are left to speculate on the exact motive. On one hand, I thoroughly appreciated that, because often I feel that writers underestimate their readers and provide resolutions that leave nothing to the imagination. On the other hand, it drove me nuts because I so desperately wanted to know what the hell was going on in that man’s mind.

What is particularly intriguing about this book is that Zed isn’t even the focus — Lois and Chloe are. So we are left with this curiosity in the back of our heads in order to serve the girls. We know everything they know, and the reason we are left to speculate about the events of that summer is because the girls are. It has shaped who they have become and what they need in life, for better or for worse. At times I loved both of these girls and at times I absolutely hated them. They were not terribly likeae characters, which only served to make them realistic. Lois keeps everyone at arms distance, and Chloe seeks affirmation in her looks and her charm. They are extensions of who they were at age twelve, as though they are stuck in time. (I’ve been doing a lot of reading on trauma lately, and Mitchell got this pretty spot-on.)

I would give this book a go if you are into thrillers and crime and murder and mayhem. I found myself desperate to go back to it until I reached the conclusion, and I am secretly (well, not so secretly now) hoping for a sequel to find out some information that Mitchell left me hanging with.