Summary:
When Caitlin Sommers finds
herself alone in a deserted parking lot with blood on her clothes and no memory
of the past few months, it seems like one of the nightmares that have tormented
her for years…but it’s all too real. Desperate to learn the truth about where
she’s been and what has happened to her but terrified of what she may find,
Caitlin embarks on a search for answers. Her journey takes her from the safe
suburban world she knows to a seedy town she’s never heard of, where a terrible
truth from her past lies hidden—a truth she can’t quite remember yet can’t
completely forget.
Review:
Note: Spoiler Alert, hidden plot material is hinted upon.
The Prettiest One is a gracious gift given to me FREE, by James
Hankins for an honest review. Honestly, I’m a huge fan of Hankins. His writing
is smooth, editing is well-done, and maybe the most important factor is that he
doesn’t try and impress the reader with crude language, unnecessary sex, and
brutal violence. Out of the books I’ve read by him, Shady Cross is still my favorite.
In it an ex-con named Stokes finds a lot of money and has to decide whether to
keep it, or let a young girl die. The book’s psychology showed an inner good in
humanity, a direct contrast to A Simple Plan by Scott Smith. Smith
probes at the darkness in us with a lot of unexpected, exciting twists leading
the good man down a black hole inside his own soul. I very much liked that
book.
But, at my core I’m an optimist and leaving the good in humanity
is another reason why I like Hankins. Caitlin, his main character in his new
novel, The Prettiest One has to struggle with the idea she may have taken a life.
Note the premise: Caitlin doesn’t remember, but what she does remember is who
she is inside and that person doesn’t want to be a killer. This was the main
reason I liked Caitlin. I also liked her strength, despite the horrible ordeal
she went through as a young girl, then as a woman. She never fell apart and she
kept looking for answers, even if they challenged everything she’d thought
herself to be.
Still, in looking, she often made foolish choices, choices that
put her and the men that loved her at risk. If she could have remembered even a
speck of her past, perhaps she wouldn’t have made them.
Helping Caitlin find her memory was a boyfriend (Bix) and
husband (Josh). The soap opera dilemma between these two and their love for
Caitlin was the reason I didn’t give this book a five star rating. Their
incessant bickering became large tea scenes that dragged the plot. Donald Mass
talks about tea scenes in his book Writing the Breakout Novel. Tea scenes scream
Low Tension Alert.
But even with the Low Tension Alert noted, Hankins pulled off
another terrific novel that I highly recommend. He did his homework on memory
loss and weaved that into a fine plot that had no loose ends. There were some
things I would have liked to know more about, but none of these affected a well
done ending. For example, I would have liked to seen Caitlin meet at least one
of the girls from her childhood, and I hoped desperately to see the missing one
- alive. I was hoping the perspective of the detective, Charlotte Hunnsaker
would add insight to this, otherwise Hunnsaker didn’t really add anything
useful for me, maybe if she’d had her own interesting inner conflict driving
her to find Caitlin’s answers, but she didn’t.
Even though Hunnsaker’s character didn’t add to the plot, the
bad guys in this novel well made up for it. The Bookerman’s were truly Boogy
Men as in Caitlin’s nightmares from her childhood. Again, I would highly
recommend this novel, if only to take down the bad guys and shed some light
into the heart of darkness.
