Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell

by:  Maggie Mitchell
published by:  Henry Holt & Co
publish date:  July 7, 2015

The summer precocious Lois and pretty Carly May were twelve years old, they were kidnapped, driven across the country, and held in a cabin in the woods for two months by a charismatic stranger. Nearly twenty years later, Lois has become a professor, teaching British literature at a small college in upstate New York, and Carly May is an actress in Los Angeles, drinking too much and struggling to revive her career. When a movie with a shockingly familiar plot draws the two women together once more, they must face the public exposure of their secret history and confront the dark longings and unspeakable truths that haunt them still.

This book was just sort of ok for me.  I went through the whole thing, and it was interesting, but there were a lot of little points that aggravated me throughout.

Lois and Carly May were 12 the summer they were kidnapped by "Zed".  He held them in a cabin for six weeks.  Then the police found them and they both went about their lives until Lois wrote a book.  It was a fiction book that loosely described the events that took place while they were held by Zed.  The book got picked up by a movie studio and by then Carly Mae was now a B List actress and she was hired to play a part in the movie.  She knew right away that it was her story and it was her chance to reconnect with Lois.  Throw in a creepy stalker that wants to re-enact the entire scenario on the movie set and you have the book Pretty Is.

So my issues were that not one but two, 12 year old girls went willingly with a kidnapper.  There was never any explanation as to how "Zed" tracked these girls down across state lines in a time when computers probably weren't too prevalent.  Secondly, he kept them for 6 weeks...or 2 months...it varies throughout the book.  Yet, the girls apparently read stacks of books in that time.  They did tons and tons of stuff in the time he kept them...it made it sound like it was 6 months instead of 6 years.  I had a hard time with the timeline.  Also, their apparent Stockholm Syndrome or whatever was going on with them was really weird and never really explained.  There seemed to be a lot of story about the after and not enough explanation about the before to justify the after.

I'd recommend this book just to see if anyone else agrees with me!!  It was an ok story.  It was interesting.  I think it could have been better.