Lauren Beukes’ 2013 speculative murder mystery The Shining Girls has some pretty solid hooks: A serial killer, a time-traveling house, a list of “shining girls” to murder across decades, and the victim who survives. For many readers, that was enough to express how impossible it would be to catch such a killer if he could just open a door into another time.
Zutter explores the plot and the characters in the adaptation and compares it directly to the novel, noting when Silka Luisa has made a smart compromise to better suit the series media. In the end Zutter acknowledges that the adaptation is not entirely true to the book but that “there’s a constant trade” when it comes to adapting writing to the screen.
Watched the whole of Season 1 of Shining Girls and looking for a comparative review? You’ll find it in this Paste Magazine article.
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