Does Pretty Make a Good Novel?

This year during the Decatur Book Festival St. Martin’s Press had a booth there.  I was so excited.  Sorry no picture!  I enjoyed meeting the people from St. Martin’s Press at the booth.  The novel that I picked up from this visit is Pretty Is by debut author Maggie Mitchell.  This novel is in the thriller suspense genre.

Synopsis:

Lois and Carly May are both survivors from a childhood kidnapping.  Both women survive the experience but their lives take different paths.  Lois keeps up with Carly May after name change to Chloe Savage while surfing the internet.  Chloe is now an actress out in Hollywood.  She is a working actress who left her hometown in Nebraska and her family.  Her father makes choices that push Carly May onto her path to become an actress.   Her next script will be for an adaptation of a popular novel. It is written by Lois using her pen name Lucy Ledger.  This novel is a fictionalization of Chloe and Lois’s experience with their kidnapper.  Lois is a college professor in a small town in New York.   She also has another career as writer.  She rarely sees her family or lets anyone else into her life.  What will happen when one of her students takes a personal interest in her life?  Could this student have a connection to the kidnapper?  When the film brings Lois and Chloe together will it be smooth sailing? Or a replay of what happened years ago?

My Thoughts:

I was a little disappointed.  The characters in this book are interesting but fall flat of interesting.  I did not feel that there was much suspense in the novel.  The author has crafted this novel so the story is narrated from Lois and Chloe’s points of view.   Then there is a section of the story which tells the story of the abduction from Lois’s novel.  This section was the most interesting part of the novel.

Thrillers tend to follow a certain path for readers.  The beginning of the novel gives you the details.  The reader will learn about the characters, setting, and what the conflict will become.  A suspense thriller novel that is three hundred fifty  pages, for example.  The first part of the novel page one to about three hundred is all the detail.  When the story climaxes about three hundred twenty; then the action starts.  The action usually keeps readers interested in finishing the novel.  I was a little interested but it did not have enough action in the end for me.

Rating:

3.75/5

Please visit Maggie on her Facebook page and Twitter.