2/5 stars
How’d I find it? As a true crime fan, this novel enticed me while browsing at Busboys & Poets after lunch.
Why not 3 or more stars? In 1969, teenage Evie becomes a tangential member of a group that eventually commits horrific acts of violence, a crime that is mercilessly teased over many pages until its ho-hum reveal. Nuggets of interest abound — Russell, the unlikely Pied Piper; the fame and fortune of Evie’s actress grandmother; Evie’s obsession with group member Suzanne; present-day Evie’s reckoning with her past — but all paths peter out. While The Girls wants to say something about female relationships, sexuality, and identity, it doesn’t reach beyond well-trod territory. It excels, however, in head-scratching descriptions of minutiae, such as “breaths like the beads of a rosary.”