Review: Pretty Girl - 13

Book: Pretty Girl-13
By: Liz Coley
Published: March 19, 2013
Published By: Katherine Tegen Books

Description: Reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart case, Pretty Girl-13 is a disturbing and powerful psychological mystery about a girl who must piece together the story of her kidnapping and captivity.

Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.

What happened to the past three years of her life?

Angie doesn't know.

But there are people who do — people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?

Liz Coley's alarming and fascinating psychological mystery is a disturbing - and ultimately empowering page-turner about accepting our whole selves, and the healing power of courage, hope, and love

My Thoughts: Holy freaking crap this book was good, but good in a really messed up way. I dont want to give up too many details so I'll just say a little

We follow Angie, a girl who has just turned up on her street after a camping trip, but only, she's 16, not 13 like she was when whe went camping, and she has no idea what happened in the last 3 years. Slowly we see the loss of time. The breaks in events as Angie tunes in an out of things and originally she has no idea what's going on. She's missing time with her family, losing sleep and feeling things she shouldn't. Soon she realizes due to some traumatic events, her mind has created multiple personalities to preserve her original self. That's it, that's all I'm saying about the plot...just know you should read it.

This book tore me apart, and then patched me up only to tear me apart again. There were so many feelings. so many things that happened that I almost felt like I needed a different personality just to deal with the book. It was great and amazing and filled with happy times, and bad times, and times in between. It was haunting, kind of like a ghost story but not quite. It was scary, not in a terrifying sort of way, but a how can she deal with all this sort of way and makes you think in depth of the power of the human brain.

I'll admit, this book didnt originally interest me. In fact, I only got it because it was on someone's list as the best book ever, and still, I let it sit in my library bag until it was almost due. But once I started the book, I couldnt get enough. This review doesnt even do it justice, but there's nothing else for me to say

Do yourself a favor and read this one, now. Its just that good! My review? 5 BIG stars!