Well, I got nothing honestly. This was not a very good book. The premise was cool (serial killer that can time travel) and all of that, but the execution of said premise didn’t work out and I found myself not liking Kirby (the final girl as horror fans like to say). The other women/girls who were murdered were not given a lot to do but die. Also, there was way too many things that were left open-ended, i.e. why is this man able to do what he is doing. It just kept going on and on and after a while I started to lose my stomach for this book. Reading about women/girls getting murdered in gruesome ways was not my cup of tea.
“The Shining Girls” follows a man named Harper Curtis who steps through time via a house he finds and is able to kill women that he knows have the ability to be forces of great change. He is destined to snuff them out before they reach that ability. Unfortunately a woman that he thought he killed, Kirby Mazrachi still lives, and he will do whatever is necessary to kill her.
There is zero development of Harper. He just goes through time taking pleasure in meeting his victims as young girls and then killing them when they are older. It’s just messy and ugly and he seems to just like to kill full stop.
Kirby is the only woman we get to spend much time with. I really didn’t get her and when she becomes focused on finding the man who killed her no one else becomes important to her at all. Since the chapters change so much to Harper, Kirby, whatever other woman Harper is stalking to kill no one is really developed at all.
The flow was painful. It just kept going on and on before we get to the final act.
And I have to say, the setting of the house and how it came to be and what it is was a total eyerolling moment. I don’t know. It just didn’t work for what we got beforehand.
The ending was just a big question mark. Of course there are questions at the end to guide reader group discussions, but my biggest one was, what was even the point of Harper? What was I supposed to take away from this? It just didn’t hit right at all.
I read this for Halloween Bingo, “Alice in Wonderland.”