Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley

She'd left for camp as a normal kid, someone who belonged in a sitcom or family drama. Now she was the unwilling star of her own special crimes unit episode.... more than a thousand days had been stolen from her. And no matter what the calendar in her head said, the flow of time and cruel experience were written all over her.

The last thing Angie Chapman remembers is being with her friends at summer camp. To her it was just a few days ago. To everyone else, she's been gone for three years. She's sixteen on the outside; but inside she feels thirteen. What happened to her? How did she survive? Her psychologist thinks she had help: multiple personalities who stepped in to keep her safe. But now, Angie is ready to reclaim her life.

Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley is such a compelling read. I loved the whole psychological aspect of Angie's dissociative states, and I thought Coley did a masterful job of weaving all those fragments and pieces together into one suspenseful puzzle. I also appreciated how raw and real it felt at times between Angie and her parents, and her friends, and the trauma of those three missing years. It's an emotional and engrossing page-turner that I really got sucked into. 

Happy Reading!

Similar reads:

The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

Good As Gone by Amy Gentry

Bookish Suspense...

Julie is only 13 years old when she is abducted from her bedroom in the middle of the night in Amy Gentry's Good As Gone.  Eight long years later, she comes home. Anna, her mother, can't believe it. Having Julie back is the happy ending she never let herself hope for, or even imagine. Finally, their family is whole again.  But then Anna catches Julie in a lie. And a former detective investigating the case questions Julie's story and her identity.  Bones of a young girl are found that fit the timeline of when Julie first disappeared.  And Anna begins to wonder if the young woman claiming to be Julie is her daughter after all.

Sounds like the plot of a typical psychological suspense novel, with all the obligatory twists and turns, doesn't it?  But wow, is Good As Gone so much more than that. I started reading it after dinner one night and I could not put it down. The unique way Amy Gentry chose to tell this story is so compelling and intriguing it completely sucked me in...and it made me want to go back and read it all over again from the start when I was done. And I was not expecting that from this book! I love it when a book exceeds your expectations. And this one definitely exceeded mine. I wish I could be more specific as to why, but I don't want to risk giving anything away. It's too good to spoil. So I'll just say...

BBC series: Thirteen

Happy Reading!

But if you like the sound of this one, then you might also like these:

Baby Doll

A Bookish Thriller...

Title: What Doesn't Kill Her by Carla Norton
First Line: The last time she would ever go swimming, all of Seattle was baking beneath a sky of blameless blue.
My Thoughts:  This is Carla Norton's second novel about Reeve LeClaire, who is fast becoming one of my all-time favorite characters. She's a survivor; seven years ago she escaped from Daryl Wayne Flint, the man who kidnapped her and then kept and tortured her for over four years. Now, Flint is the one who's escaped from the psychiatric hospital where he's been locked up since his trial, and Reeve realizes that if she doesn't do everything she can to help the FBI find Flint, she will never be free of him or her past.

I like how Reeve never gives up; she's such a gutsy character, even when she's scared to death. And I admire how determined she is to overcome the nightmares of her past. There are some other great characters in this book as well, like Milo Bender, the retired FBI agent who was on the scene when Reeve was found all those years ago, and J.D., his handsome son. All in all, this is a fast-paced and fun thrill ride. I hope Norton writes many more novels about Reeve LeClaire.

Happy Reading!

Be sure to check out Clara Norton's first novel:  The Edge of Normal