The Shining Girls

Books | Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense

3.4

(834)

Lauren Beukes

The jaw-dropping, page-turning, critically-acclaimed book of the year: a serial-killer thriller unlike any other from the award-winning Lauren Beukes. ‘GONE GIRL has not exactly gone. But THE SHINING GIRLS have arrived’ (The Times). THE SHINING GIRLS is now streaming on Apple TV+, starring Elisabeth Moss and Jamie Bell “It’s not my fault. It’s yours. You shouldn’t shine. You shouldn’t make me do this.” Chicago 1931. Harper Curtis, a violent drifter, stumbles on a house with a secret as shocking as his own twisted nature – it opens onto other times. He uses it to stalk his carefully chosen 'shining girls' through the decades – and cut the spark out of them. He’s the perfect killer. Unstoppable. Untraceable. He thinks... Chicago, 1992. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Tell that to Kirby Mazrachi, whose life was shattered after a brutal attempt to murder her. Still struggling to find her attacker, her only ally is Dan, an ex-homicide reporter who covered her case and now might be falling in love with her. As Kirby investigates, she finds the other girls – the ones who didn’t make it. The evidence is ... impossible. But for a girl who should be dead, impossible doesn’t mean it didn’t happen...

Thriller

Science Fiction

Time Travel

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More Details:

Author

Lauren Beukes

Pages

416

Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers

Published Date

2013-04-25

ISBN

0007464630 9780007464630

Ratings

Google: 5

Community ReviewsSee all

"The blurb for this sounded so cool but the book was really disappointing "

Sarah Brown

"I really enjoyed this book. I was captured by the change in perspectives and spaces. This story has a lot of texture. It is as compelling as it is brutal. "

Margie Hunter

"It left me thinking and left questions to be answered. Unexpected mentally I’ll serial killer or destiny…."

Kimberly Flanagan

"Frustrating"

Emily

"I thought this was an intriguing premise for a book, a time-travelling killer and a magical house, but the final product disappointed me. We spend WAY too much time in the killer’s head and he's extremely boring if you're not into reading the same rant about how he hates women 400 times. The romance with Kirby and her supervisor is stupid and never really amounts to anything (and in the end she STILL needs a man to save her!) and the explanation for the magic behind the house’s time travel abilities is the absolute most boring one you could pick. The "blaccent" on a few of the Chicago characters is borderline racist parody. The other shining girls are all really interesting but when you finally get interested in them they die horribly so it feels a bit pointless. For some reason I thought this was going to be about Kirby trying to save the others, but it isn't."

awesome_user_984860

"This book is so well written with fantastic characters that feel real and their development is immaculate. It's a story that will absolutely hold your interest, and is hard to put down. All that being said, it's also extremely disturbing, and dark on a level I wasn’t expecting. Because it's so wonderfully written, you feel the darkness in a way can be difficult to come to terms with. The most disturbing book I’ve read but I enjoyed this book and the clever concept of a time traveling serial killer. It creeped me but I could not put it down. There is also a Netflix series with Elizabeth Moss. I binged watched it and it is also good and creepy but not anywhere near as disturbing as the book. Highly recommend if you love serial killer story lines with a bad ass FMC and can handle disturbing scenes."

M P

Monica Parker

"This book was definitely entertaining, but it had some problems. You never understand the time travel part of it. The "House" is never explained. You also have no idea why the serial killer somehow knows he is supposed to kill these girls. If that had been explained, it would have been a more satisfying read."

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"The book had a wonderful concept, and I appreciated the characterization of Kirby and Dan. They jumped off the pages. However, the Apple TV show was a much more satisfying narrative. I felt some closure with the show that wasn’t present in the book."

Sydney Johnson

"I really enjoyed all the different time settings. The author did a great job giving the atmosphere to the different decades the story took place during."