The Shining Girls

  I first heard of The Shining Girls while listening to the author being interviewed on NPR. The phrase "time traveling serial killer in Chicago" is what drew me to this book. Reviews for this book have been all over the place. Some readers thought it was a well written genre bending book that mixes time traveling, horror, suspense and mystery while others thought the premise was very cool but it was ultimately dissatisfying. I'm in the latter group.

Description: A time-traveling serial killer is impossible to trace-- until one of his victims survives. In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back. Working with an ex-homicide reporter who is falling for her, Kirby has to unravel an impossible mystery.

Review: The Shining Girls is an ambitious, genre bending novel that doesn't quite pan out. Harper Curtis isn't your ordinary serial killer. He gets to time travel from the 1920s through the 1980s, killing girls in different decades, all to satisfy a compulsion. We aren't given any explanation or clues how the time traveling works or where does Harper's compulsion originate from, which is very disappointing since that's the only reason why I continued to suffer to finish this book when I should have given up. All we know is that Harper is compelled to track down and murder specific shining girls that he gets in visions in gruesome ways (usually evisceration), and he gets away with it since he can escape across time; except in 1989 when one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, miraculously recovers from the vicious attack and knows of him. Harper and Kirby play cat and mouse. Harper wants nothing more to fix his mistake while Kirby dedicates her whole life in tracking down her assailant, even if the police consider it a closed case.
  There are a lot of interesting tidbits found in this book, but unfortunately the author doesn't take advantage of it. Despite its action filled premise, the book moves very slowly and I was bored for most of the time. We don't really get to know Harper before he became a serial killer and we are lead to believe that a very creepy, abandoned Chicago bungalow (much like the hotel in Stephen King's The Shining) is causing him to be evil but we are never sure. Unlike Harper, we do feel bad for Kirby and want her to get her justice but she comes off as an angsty, whiny teen when in fact she's very much an adult. There is an attempt of a subdued love story between Kirby and Dan, a reporter at the Sun-Times, but I never really felt their connection. It almost came off as Dan being more like a father figure to Kirby rather than a love interest. Things start to get a little interesting as Dan and Kirby slowly uncover odd clues left behind in a dozen unsolved murder cases; it turns out Harper has been leaving behind items from the future.
 Needless to say I wasn't thrilled with The Shining Girls. It's clear that Buekes did a lot of research to make the Chicago setting authentic but she doesn't really take advantage of a very cool premise. Definitely for not all tastes, especially those with a sensitive stomach for gore and violence. Fans of the supernatural and a different spin on the horror genre might enjoy this one.

Rating: 2 stars

Words of Caution: There is strong language, strong graphic violence, and some sexual situations. Recommended for adults only.

If you like this book try: The Shining by Stephen King, The Rosary Girls by Richard Montanari, Three Days to Never by Tim Powers