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    Shining Girls
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    Shining Girls
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    Shining Girls
    Audiobook6 hours

    Shining Girls

    Written by Lauren Beukes

    Narrated by David Nathan

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Daran, dass ihre Mutter tot ist, kann Olivia nichts ändern. Aber dass ihr Vater keinen Durchblick mehr hat, das will sie ändern. Denn es bringt zu viel Chaos mit sich: Erst müssen sie wegziehen. Dann verbringt Olivias Vater mehr Zeit mit der neuen Nachbarin als mit ihr. Schließlich ist da noch die Schule, wo sich alle über sie lustig machen. Vielleicht muss Olivia einfach den Worten ihrer Großmutter vertrauen: Das Glück kommt manchmal ganz überraschend. Voller Tragik und Komik erzählt das feinfühlige SWR2-Hörspiel (Bearbeitung und Regie: Kirstin Petri) von Trauerbewältigung und einem mutigen Neuanfang.
    LanguageDeutsch
    PublisherDer Audio Verlag
    Release dateOct 24, 2014
    ISBN9783862312511
    Unavailable
    Shining Girls
    Author

    Lauren Beukes

    Lauren Beukes writes novels, comics and screenplays, and has worked in journalism, kids TV and documentary making. Her critically acclaimed novel The Shining Girls, which has been translated into 22 languages, was a Sunday Times bestseller and 2013 Richard & Judy Book Club choice. Her previous novel, Zoo City, a black magic noir set in Johannesburg, won the coveted Arthur C. Clarke Award. She is also the author of the neo-political thriller, Moxyland. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa.

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    Reviews for Shining Girls

    3.5/5

    38 ratings93 reviews

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    • 3/5
      In Chicago, a serial killer hunts through time, targeting girls from “shining girls” from different eras. Then one of his victims survives.The Shining Girls was oddly forgettable. After reading Beukes nonfiction essay “All the Pretty Corpses,” I decided I had to read The Shining Girls. The essay burns with anger at the way media treats female murder victims as pretty dead things, not people whose lives have been cut short. In it, Beukes says she wrote The Shining Girls to be as much about the victims as the killer. Unfortunately, I found it not nearly as powerful or subversive as I think Beukes intended.The Shining Girls is told from many different POVs, with the two most prominent being the killer, Harper, and the survivor, Kirby. Other sections contain points of view from Harper’s other victims, giving the reader a glimpse into the lives of the women Harper kills. Additionally, Dan, Kirby’s mentor at the Chicago Sun-Times, has reoccurring chapters.But even as The Shining Girls brings in chapters from the victims perspectives, it still ends up feeling like that same story we are all familiar with, the focus being on a male serial killer brutally murdering women. While the plot of the story is nominally Kirby bringing Harper to justice, she lacks agency, driven by the plot instead of driving it. I’m not sure what effect if any her actions during the first 75% of the book have. She could have disappeared from the majority of the story, and the result would have been the same.I also question the decision to make Kirby the survivor. All of Harper’s victims are women existing within our sexist society, but there are intersections within the category “women.” The women who die are black, Asian, gay, and trans. The woman who lives is straight, white and cis. This pattern is entirely predictable and plays into problematic trends about who gets to be a heroine.On the bright side, the pacing is appropriately fast for a thriller. I ended up reading the entirety of The Shining Girls in one day. Beukes also has a gift for describing the historical settings and how Chicago changes through the decades. It’s clear that a lot of research went into this area.However, The Shining Girls is not a book I will ever reread. The time traveling feels like a plot gimmick, the romance is completely unnecessary, and the story is not nearly as subversive as it thinks it is. At this point, I’ve tried two of Lauren Beukes books and a collection of her short stories. None really impressed me, and I don’t think I’ll be seeking out any of her work.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
    • 3/5
      I'd give this a C. Way to reminiscent of Stephen King for my liking. Fairly well executed thriller but the fantasy hook is wasted on what amounts to a police procedural.
    • 5/5
      This book grabs you by the throat and never lets you go from page one. Starting off in 1931 Chicago, Harper Curtis is a killer who murders a blind woman and takes her coat. He had killed someone else and injured his leg in the process of running away and needed to see a doctor. Luckily there's a five dollar bill in the coat and after laying low for a couple of days after murdering the blind woman he goes to the clinic and gets a cast put on his leg since his tendon is ripped and needs to heal and he's given a metal cane. Then he feels a calling to this rundown boarded-up house that when he enters is fixed up really nice inside. Upstairs is a room with the names of girls who "shine" and things that belong to them outlined on the wall. His mission was to kill them.The next time he steps outside of the house it is 1988. Inside the house, he had found a suitcase full of money and betting slips so he took some money and used it. The money was in bundles according to date which he would find out later. The women live during different times but he can go no farther in the future than 1993 for reasons he has no idea about.Kirby, one of the girls, survives the attack in 1989 because her dog saves her life. Harper leaves her to bleed out, but she gets help from a fisherman on the beach. When he checks up on her a few days later her overly dramatic mother tells him thinking he's the press that she's dead. Kirby had first met Harper when she was six and he gave her a toy horse. He took away the tennis ball she used to throw at her dog and left behind Willie Rose's lighter with the initials W.R. on it. Willie was an architect from the 1950s who was gay and worried about being pointed out a Red even though she wasn't a communist. She did have lofty ideas that she had shared with the wrong person at the firm in a world where they don't want a woman working there and will do anything to get rid of her. But they're not the ones she needs to worry about.Kirby isn't taking surviving lying down. She's tried traveling and other things but nothing is working now she wants to go after the person who did this to her. She wants to find out who he is. So she goes back to school and gets an intern at the Sun-Times with Dan Velasquez who is the sports guy but once worked homicide and did the story on her, but he burned out and couldn't handle any more man's inhumanity to man and asked to be sent to sports. It cost him his marriage. Now it's 1991 and he's agreed to help steer her in the right direction in her research if she does her job as his intern and provides him with numbers and quotes.Meanwhile, Harper is traveling back and forth in time enjoying his time in each time period and scoping out each victim killing some people that aren't on the list because they piss him off. Also, a drug addict from 1988 has discovered the inside of the house and robbed it, barely escaping before Harper returns. But nearly anyone who sees inside the house will see a dilapidated torn up house on the inside. It takes a special person to see the magical side of it. At some point, though, Harper will realize that Kirby is alive and he will be highly pissed and vindictive about ending her life. How can Kirby capture a man who travels through time? Dan is falling for her even though he doesn't want to and he is having a hard time believing the truth about Harper.This book is amazing and very unique in its storyline of having a serial killer that is compelled to kill by a house throughout time some very special girls who "shine" with life and fierceness of spirit. These are strong women whose strength the house seems to want to sap. Kirby is a great character who is full of spunk and is sick of being a victim. She has lost her old friends due to the drifting apart that happens with these things and can't seem to make new friends because she is a freak to new people who want to help her or ogle her. Dan is a romantic who sees the beauty in things like baseball. I flew through this book in no time at all it was that good. I give it five out of five stars.Quotes She punches him playfully in the arm, but hard, with her knuckle out, and he retatliates without really thinking about it, punching her back with about the same amount of force. Give as good as you get, his sisters taught him. They threw some mean punches. Also wrist burns. Wrestling him to the ground and pulling his hair. Affectionate violence. For when a hug just won’t do. That’s a Hallmark card for you-Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls p 129) Put dope and the devil up against each other in the ring, and dope will win out. Every single time. -Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls p 180) Worst of all—and this is how pathetic he’s become—pop songs make sense.-Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls 231)
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It was fun and entertaining and I didn't have to take it too seriously, which is exactly what I was looking for. I liked that I got to dip into different historical periods without slogging through 100 pages in each. I liked the concept of the shining girls and how each one was special in her own time and way. I liked that the serial killer wasn't especially clever or suave, he was just a creepy psycho. It was a good read.

      Here was my only issue, and maybe someone can explain it to me:
      In the Acknowledgements, the author makes a big deal out of researching everything and I totally believe it. But then there were dozens of instances of non-American word usage. I started making a list around page 150 because it was bothering me so much. I was reading the UK version, so it's possible much of that was edited out in the American version. But it seems to me the language (especially dialogue) should be consistent with the setting, not the audience or author. It just really pulled me out of the story.
      Why???

      NB - I understand and expect British spelling in a UK edition of an American-set book. But not word usage. It's like the difference between a BBC quoting an American "The colour of her tank top was blue." or "The colour of her vest was blue." which has a completely different meaning.
    • 3/5
      So I first tried this book a few months ago, read a few pages, and then put it back down. I'm not sure exactly why, whether the gruesomeness and gore was too much for me, or I found the book confusing, but it just didn't seem for me.However, I had heard so much about this book, and so when I got a copy for free for volunteering at a charity book sale, I put it on my TBR shelf. When it fit a Popsugar Reading Challenge category for this year, I picked it up again.It's hard to even describe the story, about a serial killer who can travel through time thanks to a mysterious house, who finds girls who "shine" and then tracks them down as women and brutally murders them, but the girl who survived who is now a woman is trying to solve the case of her past. The book is very nonlinear, which makes sense with the plot, but also made it harder for me to understand the plot. I'm glad I did give this book another chance. I didn't love this book, but I did like it. The gruesomeness and gore were sometimes too much for me, and I'm still not sure I entirely understood everything, especially some of the end. But I did find myself staying up much later than intended to finish the book, unable to stop turning pages, so clearly the book was doing multiple things right.
    • 4/5
      Not as good as "Broken Monsters" but still a terror-ific thriller/horror which I'd call magical realism. There is the issue of time travel and a House in which the a door opens onto those episodes. However,there i no explanation for this doornor is it treated as anything baffling but simply *is*. Rather experimenal in its narrative, the book uses one of my fvourite devices of each chapter being told from a different point of view, but add to this the jumping around through time as well. The time period covered is from the early thirties until 1993, at which point there is no further access. The plot follows a yuong woman who was a victim of a serial killer but miraculously survived to be the only one ever to get away from him. A journalist friend joins here in trying to hunt down this madmen. On the other side we follow the serial killer (originally from the 30's) as he jumps to and from various time periods to commit his murders with a distinct MO. The beginning is a little slow asone takes some time to adjust to the different charcters,pov and time periods. Once settled in the read is faster-paced, and completely engaging. I'm impressed with this author and will be continuing to read her other works.
    • 4/5
      There is a lot going on in this book. The unique premise features a psychotic serial killer (aren't they all?) who travels back and forth in time in Chicago from the 1930s to 1990s. There is an array of victims, his "shining girls," including the one who survived and is determined to bring him to justice. Chicago through the decades is the backdrop with shifting political and social events and mores. It is challenging in the beginning of this novel to adjust to the shifts in time, but once in the rhythm, it is an enthralling, albeit grisly, read.
    • 3/5
      There's a lot to love in this book. The time travel loops are interesting, and the horror elements are effective. There are so many aspects of this book that done very well, but I don't feel that they ultimately come together well.

      I was a bit underwhelmed by the revelation of the nature of the house. It makes for a cool loop and explanation for its effect on Harper, but the questions it raises is more frustrating than intriguing.
    • 4/5
      Ugh, so great. I love these sorts of big concept novels, and this one combines serial killers with journalist with 20th century women's history with early 90s pop culture and it's just so good. It also uses time travel very well. When I saw a photo of the author posing in front of a Carrie-in-a-manic-moment-on-Homeland style corkboard covered with note cards and red string, I knew I was in good hands. She really knows what she's doing. So good. Go read it so we can talk about it!
    • 5/5
      This one is worth all the hype. Crazy story line that you fall for! NO things don't get all answered, no totally tidy bow... but you're satisfied. A story like this wouldn't be tidy - one of the endearing things.
      Note - if you dislike time change in a story line, this ain't for you.

      This is one I honestly had trouble putting down.
    • 2/5
      The second star is for the idea, but it gets no more than that because of the flawed execution. Like a number of other readers I was hooked by the "time travelling / serial killer" concept, but I was quite disappointed.
      I felt there were two main flaws; firstly the constant jumping around.in time, place and characters made it difficult to keep track, especially when the objects were added into the complex arrangement; and secondly, because the killer's motivation - to kill the shining girls- was never explained or enlarged upon. The concept of a wormhole in time is relatively familiar, but again is left unexplained,
      As far as the characterisation was concerned, as I have already said the killer was left largely unexplained, but in any case would not have attracted any empathy, but the other two mAjor players were reasonably interesting,
      Before I started this I had marked down the author's earlier books as possibilities . Now they have moved a lot further down my very long "tor read" list.
    • 1/5
      Harper is a serial killer with a difference, he can travel through time. Kirby is one of his victims who survives. Kirby is determined to find the man who nearly killed her.I don't normally read books that could be classed as sci fi. Time travel I can cope with if it's done simply and not to complex. In this case Harper can time travel by going to The House.I was getting on with the book ok but then started getting very confused. The chapters switched between the characters and various time periods. There was a lot of backwards and forwards. I had to keep backtracking to see where I was. This then left me very frustrated. For now the book unfortunately I have left unfinished half way through. This is the reason I have given it one star. If I could have finished the book it would probably be worthy of a higher score.
    • 4/5
      This was a fast, punchy book. The overall plot is very dark - it's about a serial killer & there's plenty of gore. But he's also time-travelling, which allows the writer to use Chicago from the 30s to the 90s as a back-drop. I really like the way she highlighted a whole load of social issues through the choice of victims, without it being heavy-handed, and her attempt to show the effects of violent murders on the people left behind.Showing that emotional impact was somewhat limited by the style of the book: the chapters are often very short, snatches of action in different times. But I liked that, and felt it kept the plot moving, and it meant the devastation experienced by the families and friends wasn't overwhelming, or mawkishly sentimental. In fact, it's perhaps only something that sinks in when you've finished the book and the details come back to you as you're mulling it over.I also liked the use of names/dates for each chapter to give the reader a handle on how it all fit together. That might have been confusing because it's not told chronologically, but I found it fairly easy to keep track of once I realised Kirkby's story is mostly told in order with a flashback/ fast forward or two, whilst Harper's story is told in the order he experiences it, but he's jumping between times to commit the murders. And the chapter titles help keep track.All in all, a good read.
    • 4/5
      Harper Curtis, a victim of Great Depression, seeks refuge in a home in 1931 Chicago, only to discover a dead man's body, a list of female names written in his handwriting, and a portal to any time between 1929 to 1993. The list of names representing the Shining Girls become Harper's obsession leading him to a compulsive trips in time to kill each one of them. Each victim is left with a momento from another victim, which results in anachronistic clues. However, one of them, Kirby Mazrachi, left to die, survives. The hunted becomes the hunter as Kirby obsessed with seeking justice begins to stalk Harper.

      The author with two previous published science fiction novels uses time travel as a twist on the serial killer thriller genre. Since the novel displays key plot elements in various time periods from differing character perspectives, it helps to read the chapter titles which includes the name of the character "on stage" and the particular time period.
    • 4/5
      Horrible, brutal, wonderful, intense. Very unique. Time travel through the 20th century and a string of cruel murders, one survivor. Not for the faint of heart.
    • 5/5
      It was an interesting twist on the serial killer type of book. I loved the back and forth and the story line of both main characters. It was a very good and fast read.
    • 4/5
      Murder mystery with a time travelling killer. My favourite part of this novel was the female protagonist and her rounded character. A big change of pace from Zoo City but still enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      This was my 2nd audio book and this one went much better. There were several different readers, which really helped me keep track of who was who. This was especially good because it was already a little tricky keeping track of the different dates/times. Harper is a man who lives in a house that can time travel, but only for him. He is tasked with killing the "Shining Girls". There are objects he leaves at each body, from a different time than when the killings are taking place. For instance a baseball card left years before the player on the card is actually playing. It seems as though, because of this house, he can do whatever he wants, risk free and just keep moving. Until one of the girls survives. Kirby didn't die like she was supposed to, her poor dog leads her to help. Harper doesn't know this for quite some time, but when he finds out, he must finish the job. Poor Kirby has devoted her time to finding her attacker. She starts finding clues but can't make sense of them because they're all over the place, outside the timeframe they should be in, etc... Eventually, Harper finds her. This book was quite interesting, lots of great detail of the places, times and people Harper is after. You can tell a lot of research went into this. I do want to look into more from this author, I liked the style of her writing. I do recommend this book but warn it is a bit gruesome and has strong language.
    • 5/5
      The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes has kept me enthralled from the moment I picked it up and started reading about a Depression-era drifter named Harper Curtis, who stumbles into a house that is able to project him through time. The house has a purpose and that is for Harper to hunt down and kill a series of young women who shine with potential. These shining girls are scattered through the years but the location is always the city of Chicago.Kirby Mazrachi is one of the shining girls, but when her turn to die comes, she somehow, with the help of her dog, manages to survive the attack. Her life focus then becomes tracking down the man who tried to kill her. Working with a reporter, they start to unravel this strange mystery.I found this book to be an original take on a serial killer thriller. A little science-fiction mixed with a lot of crime story produces this time-twisting, dark story. I can see this story may not appeal to all. Those who are more interested in the how and why of the science-fiction may feel a little cheated as this book concentrates more on the thriller aspect but for me this story worked beautifully. A warning however, as The Shining Girls is very violent and the author does not shy away from the gruesome.
    • 4/5
      There are many, many serial killer novels out there, but not one that is quite like this. Featuring a killer, who stumbles onto a house that lets him travel through time to find what he calls, his "shining girls." Girls that are so full of life he is compelled to extinguish their flame. How does one possibly catch a killer that can kill and then escape to another time. He does leave a few clues, and Kirby, who did not die and is the one who got away, wants nothing more than to hunt him down. I loved that this is set in Chicago, and we are shown Chicago all the way through the thirties to the nineties. I just read that this highly inventive novel has been optioned by DiCaprio's production company, for television. Although at times it did get confusing, what year when, the concept mattered more than the details and as I read it did get easier. It is pretty descriptive so definitely not for the faint of heart, but I was thoroughly entertained.
    • 4/5
      It took me considerable time to work through this sci-fi thriller. The non-linear narrative, while elegant in its jumps and twists, took concentration and patience. Often, I found myself flipping back to previous chapters to check dates or details, in order to reconstruct events in a more accessible line. But that effort is part of the beauty of the book. The tangled narrative creates an appropriately unsettled tone that is perfect for this tale of a serial killer who jumps through time and the girl who escaped him once but must now try to stop him. It wasn't the easiest read on the block, but the experience is delicious in its details and well-crafted in its form and pace. Each chapter creates is own contained tension while also contributing to the pieced-in picture that the reader is working to form, resulting in an even greater sense of satisfaction than usual when one finally reaches the conclusion. Worth checking out for those who like their books to intrigue and challenge, and for those who can handle some pretty graphic descriptions of killings (just so you know).
    • 4/5
      An interesting concept -- a time-traveling serial killer! Good mix of thriller, victim stories and survival, as well as insights into the mind of a crazed killer who zips through several decades. Interesting storytelling, and a decent page-turner, but lacked a bit in really helping the reader to truly understand.
    • 4/5
      Another reviewer mentioned that the book skipped around a lot. Well, yeah, it is a time-travel crime thing. That was different... With this in mind, I made sure to pay really good attention to the dates at the beginning of the chapters as I listened to the audio version. There were multiple readers - and that added to the ease of being able to follow it in the audio version. Personally it was too gorey for me - I found myself fast forwarding through long sections. Those scenes didn't seem to add anything to the plot. As for the time travel thing, it was an interesting twist and the historical era recreations seemed good. I just never got how the specificity of arriving at a given time was managed. I'm glad I hung in for the ending.
    • 4/5
      I usually hate serial killers, but this was so imaginative!
    • 4/5
      Beukes does a wonderful job with her characters (except Dan). Kirby is awesome! She's ballsy and wants revenge, I loved her. Harper is such a jerk that you want to stab him through the eye. She did very well writing her villain. I loved the mash up of time travel and horror and sci-fi, serial killer. It was an interesting mix and unlike anything I have read before. I hated Dan. He was supposed to be the likeable male character in the book. BUT, he was boring and a jerk. By the end I wanted to stab him in the eye too, and maybe more than Harper. The abundance of characters along with the jumps through time made it a little hard to follow the storyline. I found myself referring back to see which character was which and remind me of what had happened before.This was the most interesting book I have read so far this year!
    • 3/5
      First Line: He clenches the orange plastic pony in the pocket of his sports coat. In The Shining Girls, a time-traveling serial killer named Harper Curtis meets Kirby Mazrachi, a young woman who refuses to die. Stumbling into a house in Depression-Era Chicago that opens into other times, Curtis is compelled to kill young women who are shining with potential, often meeting them as children and telling them that he'll be back. After each killing Curtis simply disappears back into the house and another time period. Kirby is the last shining girl, the shining girl who survived. She's made a vow to herself to bring her would-be killer to justice and uses her work with Chicago Sun-Times ex-homicide reporter Dan Velasquez towards this goal. The truth-- once she starts homing in on it-- is unbelievable.I have to admit that I was drawn to this book by its conceit of a time-traveling serial killer. I wanted to see how the author would make this work. She does, but the results are very uneven.The unevenness begins with the setting. Chicago during many different time periods (beginning with the Depression) would be a marvelous setting for this type of book, and it started out to be here. However, the various Chicago scenes soon felt like two-dimensional stage props, or like name dropping. Instead of bringing me deeper into the story, Chicago was keeping me out.The characters did the same thing. Curtis the Killer is described as "charming" more than once, but that charm never came across to me. He remained nothing more than a creepy, scary figure in the shadows whom I would hope to face with some sort of real weapon in my hand if we were ever to meet. Kirby, as the survivor who's trying to bring Curtis to justice, should elicit sympathy from readers, but outside of the very well-written and emotional scene where she is attacked and left for dead, she is anything but sympathetic. The experience has turned Kirby into a distrustful girl who keeps the world at bay with the liberal application of sarcasm. Although this would be a natural reaction to such a horrific event, the reader needs to be able to see past that from time to time. Since I couldn't, Kirby and her mission never really came to life. The only characters who did in fact shine for me were the "shining girls" that Curtis dispatched so quickly. As Kirby researches what clues she can find, we are allowed to glimpse into these victims' lives and know that they would truly have been extraordinary. Along with Kirby's much-maligned dog Houdini, these are the characters who generated enough interest for me to continue to read the book.There were also two more points in the book that didn't quite make sense to me. One, the house that allowed Curtis to travel back and forth through time needed to be explained a bit more. Readers are allowed to believe that there's something mystical going on, a strange presence of sorts. Perhaps the author felt this was needed in order to explain the time-traveling process, but I think most readers would prefer thinking the house just does it by methods unknown rather than to have the author mention something but never reveal it in more detail. The second point that bothered me was the clues that Curtis would leave behind at each crime scene. They're very distinctive clues that would stand out as "head scratchers" for certain, yet none of the homicide detectives seem to think they mean anything. I don't think seventy or eighty years' worth of detectives would completely overlook something so obvious and so puzzling.Despite its unevenness, I did enjoy reading The Shining Girls because it's such an interesting concept, and-- as I mentioned before-- the attack scene with Kirby, Curtis, and Houdini the dog is extremely well written. The book just needed more scenes like those.
    • 5/5
      First, let me say this: I hate serial-killer novels. I just hate them. I'm a mystery fan, but serial killers and child murderers... ugh. I just can't stand them. But I LOVE time-travel novels, and I thought this was a great idea. A time-traveling serial killer? Wow. In the end, I didn't think the time-travel part held up as well as the serial-killer part, but they blend together into one fantastic read. And the serial-killer stuff was gory, but not as much as some. Highly recommended for a creepy summer read.
    • 3/5
      A serial killer mysteriously travels through time from the 1920s to 1990s to murder very specific young women - he says he can see them shining. He always takes one item from their possession, and leaves them with something else. Unbeknownst to him, one of his victims survives, and spends the next several years of her life trying to figure out whodunit with the help of a seasoned old journalist.I never thought a book about time travel could feel so bland and generic. As I have mentioned before, serial killer/detective novels are not for me. The time travel aspect of this book was too weak to make up for that. Nothing about the time travel is really explored, it just sits there. The author tries to add the cool time-travel tropes I love (like leaving something for one's younger self to find, and lots of "closing the loop") but they are overshadowed by the tired old serial killer/detective tropes. (Killer returns to the murder site to jerk off; killer tortures small animals as a child; old, washed-out, divorced detective/journalist falls in love with vivacious young almost-victim). Yawn. There wasn't enough science fiction (or too much detective novel?) to make me like this book, though I did really enjoy the historical peeks into the lives of young women throughout Chicago history and the writing was lovely.
    • 4/5
      The Shining Girls is about a man named Harper who has found a house that allows him to travel through time to track down these "Shining Girls". He usually meets them when they're younger to give them something not of their time and then finds them later in their life and murders them.One of Harper's victims is Kirby. She survives his attack and starts investigating her murder and similar murders to track down her attacker.If you like thrillers this is a great book. I would say there were a couple very graphic scenes that were hard for me to get through, but the story is well written and the characters are brilliantly created. You become attached to the characters.All in all, a great read!
    • 4/5
      Kirby is a Shining Girl, the lone survivor of a serial killer when she was just a teenager. Now a college intern for the Chicago Sun-Times, she can't let her horrific attack go and is determined to find out who her would be killer was and bring him to justice. An ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez is working the sports beat when he meets Kirby. Reluctantly he decides to help her in her hunt. Together they unravel the strange mystery of her attacker, Harper Curtis. What they find is an unbelievable trail of other murdered girls and a house like no other. It's a story about a time travel serial killer. So a fair amount of suspension of disbelief is required. But it is well worth it. The Shining Girls is a unique and gripping read, right up until the very last page.