The Shining Girls

Book Details
Author: Lauren Beukes
Published: June 4th, 2013
Pages: 368 (Hardcover)
Genre: Thriller, Fantasy

"Dan searches himself for meaningful insight. Or at least an opinion. He finds himself lacking."

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes is centered around three central characters:
Harper Curtis
Kirby Mazrachi
The House

Harper Curtis uses (or is used by) the House to kill several women deemed "The Shining Girls" because of their potential. These women vary in age, sexual orientation, race, jobs and time periods.

Kirby Mazrachi is one of the Shining Girls. A young woman full of potential and destined to die by Harper's knife. Only, she doesn't die. She is meant to help complete the constellation and the circle.

The House can travel through time. Transporting Harper to various destinations so that he may kill or stalk his prey. Humming with need, the House requires mementos of these slayings and it won't let Harper rest until all is completed. Or is it Harper that won't rest until it's complete?

Thoughts
Things I loved about this book (in no particular order):

• Diversity! There were lots of different women from different backgrounds! There were several men from different backgrounds as well!
• The writing was brilliant and immersive.
• Time traveling murder house! What's not to love about that?!

Things I didn't love about this book (in no particular order):

• Another man murdering women because of their potential.
• Out dated terms (They were accurate for their time frame, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still offensive and somewhat difficult to read at times)
• How confusing the time line could be sometimes.

I guess the biggest thing (without spoiling anything) is that it ends around the beginning. So, it feels like the characters are all going to be in an endless loop. An endless loop of killing and trauma.

Don't get me wrong, I love this book. It was brilliantly written and I adored the concepts behind it. I loved the diversity (as mentioned above), but was devastated that the women were all murdered (except for Kirby of course). Harper is a time-traveling serial killer, there are victims. And each one was snuffed out in her prime (except for one, but that's also devastating in a different way).

I understand, it's a plot device. But with so many women of colour, gender variant women and women in general being murdered every day for ridiculous reasons it makes it difficult to read. It's heart breaking reading about women that you want so desperately to see flourish knowing that they are about to be murdered. Even if it is fiction. Maybe that's just me.

I had a bit of a difficult time with suspension of disbelief because of the time travel bits. I know that time travel would be a weird thing if it truly existed. It's just difficult for me to think about how he wouldn't be undoing everything he just did by going back into the past before it happened. That's difficult for me to follow.

Rating

I gave this book a 4 out of 5 on Goodreads.

For my system I'd give it a 7 out of 10 for the reasons I listed above. It was a well written novel, definitely in the top 25 for me, but due to some difficulty with the time space continuum, out of date terms and prolific femicide it got a lower score.

I would rate this book an R for graphic violence, misogyny, problematic language, adult language and adult situations.

I would not suggest this book to people who don't like open endings (or circular endings really), people who don't like fantasy or thrillers, the makers of My Little Pony (there is a Hasbro My Little Pony in this story) or time traveling serial killers.

However, if you don't mind the above issues I discussed or want to formulate your own opinions about it, I'd definitely suggest it. Like I said, top 25 books for me. Not without it's flaws.