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Sunday, September 20, 2015

4 Stars for The Prettiest One by James Hankins



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.


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