review: pretty girl-13 by liz coley

During a Girl Scout camping trip when Angie was 13, she was kidnapped. Pretty Girl-13 starts with Angie’s inexplicable return home three years later. She has no memory of the last three years or how she ended up back in her neighborhood, but there are scars around her wrists and ankles indicating she’s suffered traumas. The story of what happened to Angie unfolds as she visits a psychiatrist and begins to interact with the people she once knew.

Despite a few quibbles (the doctor missed something he really should have been able to tell), I was thoroughly engrossed by Pretty Girl-13. Liz Coley’s debut was a tough one to read (I kept thinking, “Oh no, not that too”), but I could not put it down as each detail revealed what Angie would have to endure next. The story of Angie and the alters her mind created to survive is incredibly haunting, but it is also triumphant. At the end of the book, the detective tells Angie it was an honor to meet her; I felt the same way.
5/5
Review copy from Amazon Vine.