The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes
The Shining Girls is a novel I would never have chosen to read on my own; it was a recommendation from an employee in a bookshop in Cape Town. It follows a psychopath murderer who discovers a house with a magical secret: as long as he ahs the key, he can go to any period he wants, up until 1993. (He was currently living in 1931.) Inside the house, he finds the names of various women and objects from each of them, and he kills them, in the most extreme and gruesome ways possible, one by one. Cue the one that got away: Kirby, living in 1993, who is obsessed with finding the man who tried to kill her and employs the help of a jaded journalist. This book took a long time to get to the nitty gritty, and even then, Kirby never discovers the secret the house is holding – she experiences it but has no idea what is going on – and an opportunity for valuable plot development is missed out on. There seems to be a wealth of information that is kept from readers (maybe with a sequel in mind?), which would have made the book that much more interesting. This novel was also turned into a TV series, but I do not plan on watching it because of the actors who were cast: For one, Elizabeth Moss, who is 40, playing the part of a woman in her young-to-mid-20s…no thanks. And Wagner Moura, who is famous for his role as Pablo Escobar, playing the journalist. I just can’t see him as anyone but Escobar, at least for the time being. So I will be skipping the series, which is probably for the better since I enjoyed the book so much.
Writers & Lovers, Lily King
Another book that I would have never chosen to read on my own; Writers & Lovers was gifted to me by someone who knows me very well. This book started out with what a handful of the tropiest stereotypes for a plot: educated protagonist has the dream of getting her novel published but is suffering after the death of her mother as well as being under severe financial strain. With a halfhearted breakup mentioned in the first few pages and never again, the protagonist is then thrust into a love triangle. I have to admit, I was not very convinced even as I approached the halfway point of the book, but then King started to develop the protagonist’s love interests into real people instead of placeholders, and the novel continued after what I thought would become its stereotypical ending—the protagonist selling her novel. All in all, Writers & Lovers is an endearing read with a likeable protagonist who gets her happy ending, even though it isn’t quite exactly how she imagined it.