Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell

From Goodreads

A fiercely imagined fiction debut in which two young women face what happened the summer they were twelve, when a handsome stranger abducted them

Everyone thought we were dead. We were missing for nearly two months; we were twelve. What else could they think? -Lois

It's always been hard to talk about what happened without sounding all melodramatic. . . . Actually, I haven' A fiercely imagined fiction debut in which two young women face what happened the summer they were twelve, when a handsome stranger abducted them.

Everyone thought we were dead. We were missing for nearly two months; we were twelve. What else could they think? -Lois

It's always been hard to talk about what happened without sounding all melodramatic. . . . Actually, I haven't mentioned it for years, not to a goddamned person. -Carly May

The summer precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly twenty years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still. Maggie Mitchell's Pretty Is beautifully defies ripped-from-the-headlines crime story expectations and announces the debut of a masterful new storytelling talent.  

My thoughts

7/10 from me. I really wanted to love this book, but I struggled with it. I started it, then it was put to one side before I finally picked it up again. I felt it read better being read in larger chunks rather than a few pages at a time.

Originally, I have NetGalley and the Publisher to thank for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. At the time that I read this I didn't have a kindle and the galley expired on me before I'd finished. However, I got a copy from my local Library.

Initially I was taken in by the premise of this book, the fact that the kidnapped girls come into contact with one another in later life, after seemingly living separate lives. In a case of art imitating life in so much as a film was made that had a very similar storyline to their experiences as kidnapped children and rekindles within the two of them, feelings and experiences that they both thought were well in their past.

I feel what could have been a great story became an average one in my opinion. I can't put my finger on it, but sad to say the story didn't live up to my expectations. I liked the writing style and I can't blame the Author, the story didn't deliver as I expected it too.

Grab a copy for yourself and see what you think about it. This is a debut novel by Maggie Mitchell and I will read more by her, if only to see how she develops as an Author.