Pretty Is

May 11, 2015
Mitchell's debut novel is both a skewering of America's JonBenet Ramseyâstyle fixation with little girls in peril and a fascinating glimpse at the intensity of female friendship. In the mid 1990s Carly May Smith and Lois Lonsdale, both 12, were kidnapped and held in a remote enclave of the Adirondacks for two long, claustrophobic months. Precocious Carly was a preteen pageant circuit darling, desperate to escape the dreariness of Nebraska farm life. Quiet and intelligent Lois grew up in her parents' Connecticut B&B and devoted herself to spelling bees. All they had in common were public profiles: their abductor had used newspaper clippings about them to devise his kidnapping. Told in flashbacks from alternating points of view, the work is most interesting when Mitchell explores the girls' desires and neuroses. Under coincidental circumstances (Lois writes a novel about the experience, and Carly acts in the film adaptation), the women are reunited as adults and must revisit the truth about what really happened in that cabin in the woods. Psychologically rich, with haunting detail, Mitchell's work is a disturbing, insightful look at our deep fears.

January 1, 2016

Almost two decades before the start of this novel, two very different little girls were kidnapped from Nebraska and Connecticut and held at a cabin in the Adirondacks for six weeks before being rescued unharmed. But recovering from such trauma is anything but easy and neither girl reconnects totally. As adults, Lois and Carly May alternate their stories and feelings as circumstances and unexpected danger bring them together again. Some motives remain unclear, but ambiguity is used effectively as Mitchell skillfully moves between the two characters, interweaving their pasts and present. Tavia Gilbert and Nichole Zanzarella deliver fine performances, creating an effective counterpoint between the characters. VERDICT Recommended for those who enjoyed Emma Donoghue's Room or Chevy Stevens's Still Missing. ["Despite drawbacks here, Mitchell is on her way to a place at the femmes fatales fiction dais": LJ 6/1/15 review of the Holt hc.]--Janet Martin, Southern Pines P.L., NC

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