Redheaded Reviews: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

This book grabs you by the throat and never lets you go from page one. Starting off in 1931 Chicago, Harper Curtis is a killer who murders a blind woman and takes her coat. He had killed someone else and injured his leg in the process of running away and needed to see a doctor. Luckily there's a five dollar bill in the coat and after laying low for a couple of days after murdering the blind woman he goes to the clinic and gets a cast put on his leg since his tendon is ripped and needs to heal and he's given a metal cane. Then he feels a calling to this rundown boarded-up house that when he enters is fixed up really nice inside. Upstairs is a room with the names of girls who "shine" and things that belong to them outlined on the wall. His mission was to kill them.

The next time he steps outside of the house it is 1988. Inside the house, he had found a suitcase full of money and betting slips so he took some money and used it. The money was in bundles according to date which he would find out later. The women live during different times but he can go no farther in the future than 1993 for reasons he has no idea about.

Kirby, one of the girls, survives the attack in 1989 because her dog saves her life. Harper leaves her to bleed out, but she gets help from a fisherman on the beach. When he checks up on her a few days later her overly dramatic mother tells him thinking he's the press that she's dead. Kirby had first met Harper when she was six and he gave her a toy horse. He took away the tennis ball she used to throw at her dog and left behind Willie Rose's lighter with the initials W.R. on it. Willie was an architect from the 1950s who was gay and worried about being pointed out a Red even though she wasn't a communist. She did have lofty ideas that she had shared with the wrong person at the firm in a world where they don't want a woman working there and will do anything to get rid of her. But they're not the ones she needs to worry about.

Kirby isn't taking surviving lying down. She's tried traveling and other things but nothing is working now she wants to go after the person who did this to her. She wants to find out who he is. So she goes back to school and gets an intern at the Sun-Times with Dan Velasquez who is the sports guy but once worked homicide and did the story on her, but he burned out and couldn't handle any more man's inhumanity to man and asked to be sent to sports. It cost him his marriage. Now it's 1991 and he's agreed to help steer her in the right direction in her research if she does her job as his intern and provides him with numbers and quotes.

Meanwhile, Harper is traveling back and forth in time enjoying his time in each time period and scoping out each victim killing some people that aren't on the list because they piss him off. Also, a drug addict from 1988 has discovered the inside of the house and robbed it, barely escaping before Harper returns. But nearly anyone who sees inside the house will see a dilapidated torn up house on the inside. It takes a special person to see the magical side of it. At some point, though, Harper will realize that Kirby is alive and he will be highly pissed and vindictive about ending her life. How can Kirby capture a man who travels through time? Dan is falling for her even though he doesn't want to and he is having a hard time believing the truth about Harper.

This book is amazing and very unique in its storyline of having a serial killer that is compelled to kill by a house throughout time some very special girls who "shine" with life and fierceness of spirit. These are strong women whose strength the house seems to want to sap. Kirby is a great character who is full of spunk and is sick of being a victim. She has lost her old friends due to the drifting apart that happens with these things and can't seem to make new friends because she is a freak to new people who want to help her or ogle her. Dan is a romantic who sees the beauty in things like baseball. I flew through this book in no time at all it was that good. I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

She punches him playfully in the arm, but hard, with her knuckle out, and he retatliates without really thinking about it, punching her back with about the same amount of force. Give as good as you get, his sisters taught him. They threw some mean punches. Also wrist burns. Wrestling him to the ground and pulling his hair. Affectionate violence. For when a hug just won’t do. That’s a Hallmark card for you