Such a Pretty Smile

One-sentence summary:
Lila is trying to navigate adolescence when she begins to experience strange things that make her fear that she may be too similar to her mother, an artist who has been diagnosed with a mental disorder because she hears dogs everywhere, and also there’s a serial killer who is mutilating young girls again, in the same way he did back in the past, when Lila’s mother was a child.

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My inability to capture this in one sentence is part of the problem, in my opinion, with the book: there’s too much going on, which leads to a lack of focus. Now, in all fairness, I did DNF this one at the midpoint, so I’m only really reviewing the first half of the book.

Some of the moments with Lila, as an adolescent girl struggling to be accepted, felt incredibly real and poignant and took me back to some moments of my childhood that I hadn’t thought about in years. There’s a real truthfulness, at times, to the writing, which I found very compelling. The writing is strong; my disappointment is with the storytelling.

The main selling point of this book, based on the way it’s being marketed, is the social commentary around the sacrifices women must make within the patriarchy and the punishment they receive for fighting back. While I find feminist theory fascinating, I found the exploration of these notions in this book is too heavy-handed and on-the-nose to be effective. So much focus was given to this commentary, along with the elements of horror that were used to drive home the oppression of the female gender, yet the narrative thread never quite hung together. 

There was a lack of clarity about what exactly was happening. By the midpoint, my intuition was telling me that the end wasn’t going to hold any answers either. I’m perfectly fine with ambiguity if the journey, or the characters or SOMETHING is interesting enough for me to stay engaged.

Sadly, this one did not work for me, but some fans of horror or feminist fiction may enjoy it.

This comes out Jan. 18.

Thank you St. Martin’s Press for the ARC!