“The Girls”
Written by Emma Cline
Review written by
Diana Iozzia
Sigh. I really don’t like having to
write a negative review, but this review is going to be pretty negative. I feel
that if you read this before you read the book, you might come out with a poor
impression or feel less likely to read the book.
“The Girls” follows our main
character, Evie Boyd, (honestly just had to look back into the book for that).
Evie had a weird childhood, where she didn’t like her stepfather and her mom.
Her father is absent, but she knows her father’s girlfriend, Tamar, pretty
well. I really enjoyed her father and Tamar most out of all the characters, but
they hardly have any presence, so I think you can infer something about that…
The only sympathy I felt was for Tamar, Evie’s father, and the murder victims.
I never felt sympathetic towards Evie. She was an unlikeable character, and it
really rang true for the entire book.
Evie meets Suzanne and a couple of
other girls, who live in a little, crappy farm, but this world is enchanting to
Evie. It’s practically a cult, but it’s mainly weird, sexual, drug addicts who
live together and steal to survive. I was surprised that there wasn’t any religious
aspect to this, because statistically, cults do follow religious patterns. The
leader of this “cult” is Russell who finds himself competing with his friend,
Mitch, who is a musician. Mitch is alluring and many of the girls like him. I
honestly think that branding this as a “cult” makes it too buzz-wordy. This is hardly
a cult, so that disappointed me.
We also read Evie as a middle-aged
woman who takes in her old roommate’s son and his girlfriend. This is just a
really strange part of the story. Yes, I understand it’s metaphorical. Evie takes
in and tries to protect the poor little girlfriend. It’s just weird. When we
read this present-day part of the story, Evie, Julian, and Sasha talk about the
cult and the murders the cult has committed. But of course, it’s like water in
the desert. We receive so little and randomly about the murders, that you have
to read the entire book to hear about the murders. The actual events are very
similar to the Charles Manson murders, which is oh, so relevant now that he’s
just died. Not to spoil, but if you’re uncomfortable with innocent people being
ruthlessly murdered… Another thing that bothered me about the night of murders
was that none of these characters had any violent tendencies, or seemed that
they were that manipulated into killing. It felt just randomly thrown in at the
end. Surely, you’d imagine that all along the characters were creepy, but the
only creepy one was Russell, who takes on the Manson position of being absent
that night.
There are many aspects I didn’t like
about this story. There is so much underage sex, in really gross, graphic
detail. No, I didn’t think that a cult story would be absent of sex and drug
abuse, but it’s a little too graphic for me. I mean every aspect of sex in this
book is underage, so it’s a bit of a creepy factor. Also, I’m not usually the
kind of person sensitive to this, but maybe it would have been a bit better to
make the underage sex less glamorous?? It’s very warm and cuddly and nice, and
I’d worry it may give a younger reader the wrong idea.
Lastly, in every review, I always list
off the last few things I have made a note to mention with page markers and
sticky notes: I wanted to mention that the first few chapters were very
intriguing, but that was it. I felt I had to push myself past a lot to get to
the good parts. I didn’t skim through it, but I probably could have. Another
thing that irritated me in the end was that Evie was complicit. She had a poor
feeling that something was going to happen the night of, still planned to go
along. She never confessed to being complicit in the end, which bothered me. Just
a happy ending for her… I’m really glad that I didn’t spend any money on this,
just a five-minute trip to the library. Oh, well.
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