The Shining Girls is a Unique and Violent Horror
Lauren Beukes is incredible. That’s it. That’s the review.
Just kidding, but seriously Beukes blows me away with her talent. I first read Broken Monsters a few years ago and was immediately hooked on her bizarre and fantastical horror. For some reason I never followed it up with her other books even though I thought of that story fondly. But this year my reading is determined by a TBR jar. I’ve written all my to-be-read books and thrown them in a jar and I pick one and read it and so on. One of the TBR picks this month was The Shining Girls and I read it and loved it so let’s talk about it.
Bear with me here – the plot is a little complicated. We’ve got multiple timelines going here. Harper Curtis during the depression era is running from the Sherriff and an angry mob when he discovers a house key from a woman he’s murdered. He finds the house and inside there’s a murdered man and upstairs there’s a bedroom that he’s been in before. It makes his head ache and all along the wall are strange tokens like costume fairy wings and a baseball card.
Meanwhile in the early ‘90s, a young intern named Kirby is trying to find the man who brutally attacked her and left her for dead.
It turns out that this house that Curtis has found is sort of a time machine in a way. He can open the door and walk into Chicago into any age past the depression era. He begins to stalk young women and ultimately murder them. He’ll find them when they’re younger and leave a token with them, like a little pony toy or a tennis ball. Then he’ll come back when they’re older, murder them and leave a different token from another murder. He calls them his shining girls.
And if he doesn’t kill these shining girls, his head aches and the house gets mad.
Okay we’re going into full spoiler territory now so skip to the bottom if you want the overall review.
Kirby meets Curtis twice. When she was a young girl he gave her a My Little Pony. Then when she’s a young adult he comes back to kill her. But he isn’t able to finish the job and Kirby is the first and only Shining Girl to not die. This throws things for a total loop for the house and for Curtis.
Kirby begins to investigate her attempted murder while working at the newspaper as an intern. She digs through tones of old records until she starts to see a pattern of women being found murdered with a strange item found on them that they didn’t own. This is when things start to fall into place. But Curtis is also getting close to finding her to finish the job.
The two end up at the house fighting the ultimate battle to the death.
story mood board
OKAY SPOILERS OVER
Here’s what I loved:
The gore – it’s astounding. Beukes never shies away from violence and this story is no exception. What Curtis does to each shining girl is intense and horrifying. He truly is a terrifying, evil man.
Kirby – I loved this bitch. Tough as balls, a little bit broken, but headstrong. She doesn’t back down once when things push up against her investigation or when she can’t find her way. She just keeps fighting. Also she has this hippy mom who is kind of her own version of a bad ass and learning their relationship and watching it evolve through the story is really great.
The time travel aspect – I see a lot of hate for this part of the story which kind of cracks me up since it’s in the synopsis. Ya’ll knew what you were getting into. I personally loved it. It’s a really scary concept to me that a killer could have access to something like this. Realistically they could just keep killing and killing and killing and never getting caught. Curtis can hop in and out of time as much as he pleases. Luckily, for us and for Kirby – he makes a lot of mistakes so he can be stopped. And as the story comes to the climax it was really satisfying to see all the puzzle pieces fall into place. A strange thing that was mentioned 20 pages ago is now satisfyingly explained.
The Shining Girls is something unique and fresh within the horror genre with some good old-fashioned tropes we love in a brand new and exciting package we haven’t had. It’s like The Shining house meets an evil Doctor Who meets a more violent Lolita. An outstanding novel.
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