The Girls

My mum had bought this book after it had been highly recommended and as I’m a faster reader, she kindly let me read it before her – thanks mummy!!!

It’s incredible to think this is Clines’s first novel, the quality of the writing is exceptional.

‘Algae speckling the hair on my legs like filings to a magnet’

Emma has a very descriptive writing style allowing your imagination to create vivid scenes of Evie’s adventures. Her style beautifully captured the naivety and ‘desperation to please’ phase that all young girls go through.

From the very first page, the reader is made very aware that something very bad has happened and this story builds up the events quite like an episode of CSI….you’re presented with a glimpse of the ‘crime scene’ and then you spend the rest of the book digesting the ‘who’, the ‘when’ and the ‘why’…. which don’t worry I won’t give away! It all goes wrong when Evie meets ‘the girls’, particularly Suzanne. Evie is easily influenced by these older girls and is desperate to please them, even running away from home to join them on the farm. At the farm, Evie meets Russell, who in my eyes seemed like an absolute creep and if I’d met him I’d probably have recoiled and ran away… but in Evie’s young eyes – she sees him as a calming, authoritative figure who will do anything for his girls.

It first appears that this book is flicking between the past and the present to look at how Evie is connected to the tragedy, but it soon becomes apparent that the past scenes are told from Evie’s current perspective i.e. she’s able to reflect on the events and single out instances where perhaps she should have approached a situation differently.

This book shed a light on a topic that I’m not very familiar with – cults. It gave a very balanced view on why people would be attracted to them and the spooky detachment they created from the ‘real’ world.

Although this isn’t my usual kind of book, I thoroughly enjoyed it – it was intense and different.

Until next time, Chloé x

P.S. I’m back in my comfort zone with my current book, I’m reading a crime thriller by Stephen Booth – The Devil’s Edge!