Review: Pretty Is

Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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

Maggie Mitchell's fiction debut is nothing short of delectable. I had the opportunity to attend a reading at my university and was blown away by the power of her writing and her unique voice. She jokes about being the official "kidnapping lady" now but after reading her novel I can certainly see why.

Lois Lonsdale and Carly May Smith are polar opposites, down to the color of their hair and their home towns. Lois, a native of Connecticut where her parents run a quiet B&B, is a shy girl who delights in reading books. Carly May is a pageant queen with a self-possession few twelve-year-olds can claim. Yet somehow their kidnapper has chosen the two of them for what seems to be a bizarrely innocent two months of imprisonment in the hills of Upstate New York.

They call him Zed and he tells them nothing of himself yet seems to know everything about them, having collected files on the two girls long before enticing them into his car. He is kind to them and though they both instinctively fear the situation, neither girl fears Zed himself, making for an unique take on the usual kidnap scenario. Years later, long after returning to their families, neither woman is doing well. Carly May is now Chloe Savage, a struggling actress with a drinking problem. Lois is a tightly wound professor who relives the kidnapping in her own bizarre way: by writing a thinly veiled novel under an equally thin pseudonym.

Somehow Lois' novel, Deep in the Woods, is being made into a movie and Chloe has been cast as the female detective who falls in love with the kidnapper. As she prepares for the role and for seeing her fellow captive for the first time in almost twenty years, Lois is battling an obsessed student who seems to know a bit too much about the girls' past.

In an unexpected twist, Lois and Carly May confront their past by barreling head long into their future where it seems they're left with far more questions than answers.

For a debut novel Maggie Mitchell has hit a home run and I for one will eagerly await her sophomore effort.

View all my reviews