I'm now all caught up with Lauren Beukes! Write more! :-)Beukes is one of my favorite authors, and this is an excellent novel. I do have to say, however, that for me, it might be the least striking and remarkable of her works, although I believe it is her most critically-acclaimed.It's a cross-genre mashup of a time-travel story and a serial killer/murder mystery. Harper Curtis has always been a psychopathic killer. But when the hobo, back in 1939, wanders into a seemingly-abandoned house that's...

There's a lot for me to love about this book:1) The main character Kirby is fantastic. She is a survivor (literally), independent, courageous and determined, a bit of a smart ass with a smart mouth. But she's no mere Mary Sue, possessing vulnerabilities and flaws that make her uniquely "Kirby" and nobody else. I found her funny and totally sympathetic. Quite honestly, the entire novel pivots around her. Without her, the intricate house of cards the author builds would collapse in on itself at th...

Here's the thing about this book: it is a mash-up of many different genres, and while the execution was perfectly fine, I felt none of them were showcased in a way that was particularly...outstanding?A breakdown of some of the different elements this book tries to incorporate, along with a few thoughts on each:Time travel: the jumps in timeline in this book involve a weird house in Chicago in the 1930s. It shows Harper Curtis all the girls he's yet to kill, and allows him to slip in and out of d...

I made a mistake with this -Im not going to to continue.

The one thing that impresses me the most about this book is the sheer ambition.I mean, it's a Mystery cat-and-mouse game told from killer who can hop through time from Depression Era through the early nineties, getting his depraved game of meeting little "shining" girls and coming back moments later when they're all grown up to brutally murder them.And then we also get a heavily researched and deeply characterized slew of female victims that reads more like a brilliant historical novel than what...

No, not the twins from the Kubrick movie, but the targets of a serial killer who finds a time portal in Chicago during the Depression and jackrabbits his way through recent American history, killing women and taking trophies. Until, that is, he encounters a tuff girl who’s not so easy to do away with. It’s the black-hole version of The Time Traveler’s Wife.

I read this book as it was listed somewhere as a"Top twenty must-read books of the summer."I believe it was in "Paste" Magazine, but I am not sure.I read a lot of "book lists" because I read a lot of books.It is billed as a "Serial Killer" novel with a twist-Time travel.OK, I'm sold.Bring it on!This book tries so damn hard to be clever that it loses its focus straight out of the gate.It is so caught up in the vehicle of "time travel" that it becomes snared in the trappings of 'contrived nuance.'...

I was going to fire up the time-mower to do this review, but I was scared I’d bump into a homicidal maniac so I left it in the garage this time.Harper Curtis is a hobo during the Great Depression in Chicago who makes a miraculous discovery when he gains access to a mysterious house that can transport him into the future up until the early ‘90s. Unfortunately, Harper is a psychopath who starts using names and objects in the house to track and murder women in various times. Harper thinks that the

Quick caveat to apologising for not reading or reviewing so much anymore. I'm an English Lit student and it's pretty much killed reading for pleasure for me. But along came "The Shining Girls", and Karen's review compares it to "Gone Girl", one of my favourites and the big buzz book of summer 2012 and I need to get on this shit.Then I read it.And I don't know what's wrong with me, but it's as simple as this - I don't understand the hype.Looking at the blurb, I do. The premise is both devilishly

SQUEEE! this book is going to end up being the "it" book of the summer, and probably beyond, because some of you are slow to catch on, and it deserves a longer "it" cycle.it is about a time traveling serial killer.which sounds like drunken-mad-libs, but it works. time travel (the idea of time travel) frequently either makes my head hurt, or is just too silly for me to care aboutbut this one is different. the time travel is never given any scientific justification - it just is and you accept i...

This book is weird. The climax features a one-sided snowball fight. And it’s about a time-traveling serial killer. It’s weird. It’s also not very good. The Shining Girls is a book of parts, and some parts work, some parts don’t. Each chapter focuses on a person and a time. Harper, the time-traveling serial killer, spends most of his chapters in the Great Depression Era, plotting escapades to the future to kill “shining girls.” The other main character is Kirby, a shining girl from the early 90s

A killer travels through time picking his victims and leaving mementos behind.I thought I'd venture outside of my comfort zone with The Shining Girls and I certainly managed that. It was far too gory and violent for me.The trouble is that almost half of the story is told from the killer's point of view. The reader gets a front row seat at the crimes, usually immediately after a series of passages describing the girl so that an emotional connection is formed with the victim.I was on a run listeni...

First, we'll address the 800-pound gorilla in the room."How you doin', Mr. Bananas?""Doing fine, E. How's the family?""They're well. Autumn's growing up too quick and Chris... well, Chris is a dude. You know how dudes are.""I do, I do. So what is it that I can help you with, E.?""Oh, nothing. Just wanted to address you.""Oh. Well you should know that this is a terrible joke and, if people laugh, they'll be laughing at you, not with you.""I know.""Good. Just wanted to make that clear. Say, do you...

It's not easy to sell people on the concept of The Shining Girls, because every time I try to describe the plot, I can't do it without making this sound like the dumbest possible idea for a book. This is a story about a time-traveling serial killer. See? It sounds so dumb and so bad. And if you read it and came to the same conclusion, I would not blame you at all. But, much like the cranked-to-eleven lunacy of The Girl on the Train, this book just worked for me. In essence, this is a very, very

I wanted to like this book way more than I actually did. The premise of it sounds wonderful. A time traveling serial killer? Color me intrigued. The thing was this book reads so slow that I kept falling asleep. There's a house that allows this cray cray man to travel across time. Spotting girls that "shine" and going back later when they have grown up and killing them. Brutally.I thought the "shine" thing would draw me in since I loved that theme in The Shining and Doctor Sleep. Nope. There are

Of course I have pet peeves, don’t we all. I am bone weary tired of books being promoted as the next Gone Girl or worse still….just like The Secret History. So just to set the record straight this is nothing like Gone Girl and the only relation I can see to Stieg Larsson’s books is that there is a female survivor, who is not prepared to lay down. Then again a great many books have kick ass female survivors. The problem with this need to categorize some books as being similar to this or that is t...

Wow. Just wow.I'm amazed at the mixed reviews that this book has received. I loved it.A time traveling serial killer. A girl who survived his attack. She tries to put her life back together and to put an end to his murdering ways.I felt deliciously drunk on time, as the chapters changed POV and year, but all clearly marked by the title heading. During the last several chapters, my feet were making little running motions and I kept checking to see how many pages of tension were left. That's rare....

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, first published in 2013, is fascinating, almost hypnotic, for many reasons, but emphatically because its style and subject matter makes it an odd fit for clearly defined genres. Combining elements of horror, murder mystery, thriller, crime, and time travel fantasy this book finds itself on a unique bookshelf and Beukes demonstrates her rare gift of imagination and technical ability. Using a shifting perspective, jumping chronological narrative technique that w...

There are many, many serial killer novels out there, but not one that is quite like this. Featuring a killer, who stumbles onto a house that lets him travel through time to find what he calls, his "shining girls." Girls that are so full of life he is compelled to extinguish their flame. How does one possibly catch a killer that can kill and then escape to another time. He does leave a few clues, and Kirby, who did not die and is the one who got away, wants nothing more than to hunt him down. I l...

This book has a great premise: It's a time-traveling serial killer! One of his victims survives and starts to track him down! However, I was disappointed in the novel and I think it got overhyped. The chapters alternate between different characters and time periods, and the author was juggling too much and couldn't make it gel. The killer, Harper, has so many murder victims that it's difficult to care about them or even to remember who is who. We also don't get any explanation for why Harper was...