{"id":11236,"date":"2023-09-14T01:00:19","date_gmt":"2023-09-14T05:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/?p=11236"},"modified":"2024-08-31T22:24:27","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T02:24:27","slug":"book-the-shining-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-the-shining-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shining Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"book-1835\" class=\"bdb-book-info\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/book_theshininggirls.png?fit=250%2C378&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The Shining Girls\" class=\"alignright\"\/><strong>Title:<\/strong> The Shining Girls<br \/><strong>Author:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/author\/lauren-beukes\/\">Lauren Beukes<\/a><br \/><strong>First Published:<\/strong> <span content=\"2013-06-04\">June 4, 2013<\/span><br \/><strong>Publisher:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/publisher\/mulholland-books\/\">Mulholland Books<\/a><br \/><strong>Pages:<\/strong> 401<br \/><strong>Genre:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/genre\/horror\/\">Horror<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/genre\/science-fiction\/\">Science Fiction<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/genre\/thriller\/\">Thriller<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/genre\/time-travel\/\">Time Travel<\/a><br \/><strong>Format:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/format\/hardcover\/\">Hardcover<\/a><br \/><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/source\/library\/\">Library<\/a><br \/><strong>Rating:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/book-database\/rating\/4.5\/\"><span class=\"bdb-font-awesome-star-wrap\"><i class=\"fas fa-star\"><\/i><i class=\"fas fa-star\"><\/i><i class=\"fas fa-star\"><\/i><i class=\"fas fa-star\"><\/i><i class=\"fas fa-star-half-alt\"><\/i><\/span><\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/16131077-the-shining-girls\" target=\"_blank\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/addtogoodreads.png?ssl=1\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\"\/><\/a><br \/><br \/><strong>Synopsis:<\/strong> <p>Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future. Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.<\/p>\n<p>At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of these shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He's the ultimate hunter, vanishing without a trace into another time after each murder -- until one of his victims survives.<\/p>\n<p>Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on an impossible truth . . .<\/p>\n<strong>Get the Book:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4ffpXG0\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon<\/a>\r\n<hr \/><\/div>\t\t<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">\n\t\t\t{\n\t\t\t\t\"@context\": \"https:\/\/schema.org\/\",\n\t\t\t\t\"@type\": \"Review\",\n\t\t\t\t\"datePublished\": \"2023-09-14T05:00:19+00:00\",\n\t\t\t\t\"description\": \"The Shining Girls\",\n\t\t\t\t\"publisher\": {\n\t\t\t\t\t\"@type\": \"Organization\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"name\": \"Radical Dreamer\"\t\t\t\t},\n\t\t\t\t\"url\": \"https:\\\/\\\/pastelgoth.net\\\/blog\\\/book-the-shining-girls\\\/\",\n\t\t\t\t\"itemReviewed\": {\n\t\t\t\t\t\"@type\": \"Book\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"name\": \"The Shining Girls\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"author\": [\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t{\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"@type\": \"Person\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"name\": \"Lauren Beukes\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"sameAs\": \"https:\\\/\\\/pastelgoth.net\\\/blog\\\/book-database\\\/author\\\/lauren-beukes\\\/\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t],\n\t\t\t\t\t\"isbn\": \"\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"numberOfPages\": 401,\n\t\t\t\t\t\"publisher\": {\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"@type\": \"Organization\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"name\": \"Mulholland Books\"\t\t\t\t\t},\n\t\t\t\t\t\"image\": \"https:\\\/\\\/i0.wp.com\\\/pastelgoth.net\\\/blog\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/book_theshininggirls.png?fit=250%2C378&ssl=1\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"datePublished\": \"2013-06-04T00:00:00+00:00\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"sameAs\": \"https:\\\/\\\/www.goodreads.com\\\/book\\\/show\\\/16131077-the-shining-girls\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"genre\": \"Horror\"\t\t\t\t},\n\t\t\t\t\"author\": {\n\t\t\t\t\t\"@type\": \"Person\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"name\": \"Jamie\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"sameAs\": \"https:\\\/\\\/pastelgoth.net\\\/blog\\\/\"\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t, \"reviewRating\": {\n\t\t\t\t\t\"@type\": \"Rating\",\n\t\t\t\t\t\"ratingValue\": 4.5,\n\t\t\t\t\t\"bestRating\": 5\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t}\n\t\t<\/script>\n\t\t\n<h2>Review<\/h2>\n<p><strong>The Shining Girls<\/strong> follows Harper, a crude serial killer from the 1930&#8217;s that can hop through time; and Kirby, the spunky young woman that got away. This book was incredibly ambitious in its premise and I spent a great deal of my time reading the book wondering if it could deliver and I can happily say that I wasn&#8217;t disappointed.<\/p>\n<p>The story is a heavily character driven dive through recent American history, from the Great Depression in the 1930s all the way up to the early 1990s. I was impressed by the amount of research that was put into this book, with each decade having enough detail to get a good feel for the era. Many of the characters were pretty well fleshed out for such short chapters, and I found myself liking many of them.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite part of the story, though, was the tragedy that was Harper because of how very flawed and human he is.  He views himself as commanding, charming, and persuasive, but to many of his victims, he&#8217;s just downright creepy. He thinks of himself as calculating yet he makes mistakes left and right. He has a drive to rise up from the trenches of poverty and starvation from his own era, to be powerful. His choice of victims are all women in a great act of femicide because he has this dire need to feel masculine. He chooses women that he views as invincible, that <strong>shine<\/strong> with ambition in order to assert his dominance by snuffing them out. He thinks he has this divine purpose, a destiny to fulfill because he wants it so desperately, even though the reality is that it&#8217;s simply senseless violence with no real meaning. He obsesses over the murders, returning to the scene of the crimes over and over to get off. <em>Harper is pathetic<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It was a refreshing change from the stereotypical smooth, genius archetype that glorifies killers. I didn&#8217;t know right away that this book was meant to be a feminist novel, but that&#8217;s what I took away from not only Harper&#8217;s struggle with masculinity, but with the strong and fiercely independent female characters all throughout the book.<\/p>\n<p>There were a couple of problems with the book, however, that I feel need to be addressed. The mash-up of genres is both a good and bad aspect of the story. The middle chapters where romance comes into play to me was really distracting and feels out of place. The tagline describing the novel also states that &#8220;the girl who wouldn&#8217;t die hunts the killer who shouldn&#8217;t exist&#8221; but honestly, it didn&#8217;t feel much like Kirby was really <em>hunting<\/em> the killer. Looking for connections with other murder cases and investigating some wild hunches, yes, but really she spends most of the book developing her bond with Dan. I would have really liked for this to be more of a cat-and-mouse type of hunt between Kirby and Harper.<\/p>\n<p>The chapters with Harper were much more interesting, but even those became a little repetitive. We as the reader follow Harper as he stalks his victims in childhood, waiting for the right time to strike when they reach adulthood. While it was necessary for the plot to detail the characters to both connect them to the greater chain of paradoxes and to show Harper&#8217;s descent, the violence is excessive and extremely detailed, and after a while, it started to feel more like torture porn. It just got tiring after a while.<\/p>\n<p>Despite its flaws, I thought this book was good, and I mean <em>really good<\/em>. I loved the way that the time paradoxes were handled, time travel stories tend to be tricky and usually end up with a couple of glaring loopholes. The loops are handled in a way that I found satisfying and this book is easily my favorite time travel novel I&#8217;ve ever read. It is truly unique and is one of the novels that I still think about years after reading it.<\/p>\n<h2>Quote<\/h2>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;But she was the kind of girl you couldn&#8217;t <strong>keep down<\/strong>. Unless you <strong>cut her up<\/strong> and <strong>caved in her skull<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<h2>Content Warnings<\/h2>\n<span class=\"ubb-spoiler\"><a class=\"ubb-view-spoil\">View Spoiler &raquo;<\/a><span style=\"display: none;\" class=\"ubb-thespoil\">Femicide, Masturbation, Misogyny, Stalking, Violence <a class=\"ubb-hide-spoil\" style=\"cursor: hand; cursor: pointer;\">&laquo; Hide Spoiler<\/a><\/span><\/span>\n<h2>About the Author<\/h2>\n<div class=\"ubb-about-author\">\n<h3>About Lauren Beukes<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/author_laurenbeukes.png?fit=200%2C200&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"alignleft ubb-about-author-photo\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/author_laurenbeukes.png?w=200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/author_laurenbeukes.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/author_laurenbeukes.png?resize=75%2C75&amp;ssl=1 75w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Lauren Beukes is the award-winning and internationally best-selling South African author of The Shining Girls, Zoo City and Afterland, among other works. Her novels have been published in 24 countries and are being adapted for film and TV. She\u2019s also a comics writer, screenwriter, journalist and documentary maker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ubb-author-links\"><a href=\"https:\/\/laurenbeukes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Website<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/laurenbeukes\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Twitter<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/laurenbeukes\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Facebook<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/426034.Lauren_Beukes\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Goodreads<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3UndtnI\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Amazon<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/laurenbeukes\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">Instagram<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review The Shining Girls follows Harper, a crude serial killer from the 1930&#8217;s that can hop through time; and Kirby, the spunky young woman that got away. This book was&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[3057,386,1068,4335,4040,1884],"book-author":[1561],"book-illustrator":[],"book-series":[],"book-publisher":[],"book-genre":[],"book-source":[],"book-format":[],"class_list":["post-11236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-2013-goodreads-choice-award-nominee","tag-african-literature","tag-serial-killers","tag-set-in-chicago","tag-set-in-illinois","tag-south-african-literature","book-author-lauren-beukes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/book_theshininggirls-header.png?fit=1080%2C540&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11236"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18774,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11236\/revisions\/18774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"book-author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book-author?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"book-illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book-illustrator?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"book-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book-series?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"book-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book-publisher?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"book-genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book-genre?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"book-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book-source?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"book-format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastelgoth.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book-format?post=11236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}