The Shining Girls hit the shelves in the UK today! Which makes today crazy happy and crazy stressful. Eeek! It’s lovely to see the response on Twitter and blogs so far.
You can pick it up from all major bookstores, some major supermarkets or order online by clicking here.
Here’s the trailer by the evil geniuses at One Darnley Road.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go1sVbjxHVw
And here’s a round-up of some of the reviews so far:
SciFi Now says, “The Shining Girls is both a fascinating journey through modern American history and an utterly compelling and chilling thriller.”
“It’s the chapters devoted to Harper’s victims that really stand out. The shining girls are chosen because of their strength and potential, and each one is a fully realised character. Their separate eras are wonderfully rendered and Beukes endears these women who are doomed to meet Harper’s knife to us with great speed and skill, from the paranoid Fifties architect to the ship-welding WW2 widow to the radium-painted ‘Glow Girl’.”
Naomi Frisby on The Writes of Women: “It would be difficult to overstate how much I loved this book. It’s a thriller for people who don’t read thrillers; fantasy for people who don’t read fantasy, and literary fiction for people who don’t read literary fiction. It’s a bloody good book for people who like to read bloody good books.”
Curiosity Killed The Bookworm: “A genre defying novel… solidly crime but with an SFF element, weaving through periods in recent history as well as being a gripping thriller… [it] will stick with you long after.”
Over at Excuses And Half Truths, Rob Wickings said, “The Shining Girls is boldly inventive, fearlessly intelligent and bracingly original. Along with Michael Marshall, who made his name with a trio of mind-bending SF novels before moving into thrillers, Lauren Beukes is showing that it takes a writer with a taste for the fantastical to twist the serial killer genre into something new and exciting.”
KJ Mulder on Worlds In Ink: “It’s a fantastically creepy, mind-bending read that grabs you and just doesn’t let go until the very last page… The ending is worthy of anything Stephen King can come up with. It’s satisfying, gives closure but also brings things full circle in the most unexpected way… I found myself haunted by the implications for days afterward.
@mattlibrarian on the Teen Librarian blog: “The Shining Girls has a breathless, multi-layered narrative that kept me guessin… It is the type of book that grips you, demanding your attention and then rewards you with a thrilling story and ideas that stay with you long after you have closed the covers.. In closing please let me say AUGH! This book is amazing! You have to buy it, read it then tell your friends to do the same!”
Liz Wilkins on Goodreads: “Don’t let the “Thriller” tag give you preconceptions – it is thrilling, but trying to put this novel in a genre box is like trying to explain to people why you love your children.”
Dave Brendan’s blog: “This novel is disturbing, thrilling and intelligent – Lauren has shifted into new territory with this often-sad, eminently readable tale of a hunter and his prey, of the House you’ve always wondered about but never had the guts to enter, of the strength of character and the pull of destiny… the moments that stitch together our lives with lasting and reverberating echoes.”