Book Description
Reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart case, Pretty Girl-13 is a disturbing and powerful psychological mystery about a girl who must piece together the story of her kidnapping and captivity.
Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.
What happened to the past three years of her life?
Angie doesn't know.
But there are people who do — people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?
Liz Coley's alarming and fascinating psychological mystery is a disturbing - and ultimately empowering page-turner about accepting our whole selves, and the healing power of courage, hope, and love.
About the Author
Liz Coley's short fiction has appeared in Cosmos magazine and speculative fiction anthologies. Her passions beyond reading and writing include singing, photography, and baking. She plays competitive tennis locally in Ohio to keep herself fit and humble.
With a background in science, Liz follows her interest in understanding "the way we work" down many interesting roads. Pretty Girl-13's journey into the perilous world of dissociative identity disorder is one of them.
SOURCE: AMAZON VINE
MY THOUGHTS
LOVED IT
No way around some spoilers in this review...
Angie has no recollection of the past three years of her life. She went camping with the girl scouts at age thirteen, and when she came back to herself, she walking up to her front door at age sixteen, although in her mind, she is still thirteen. What Angie soon discovers is that she has compartmentalized pieces of herself that protected her from the abuse she suffers at the hands of her kidnapper. As she works with a psychologist, she tears down the walls that separate the different parts of her character. As you get to know each part of Angie's character, you are taken through the horror she experienced and her hope of survival.
If you remember Sybil or The Three Faces of Ever, this book will strike a chord with you. I was fascinated with how the author brought modern technology and psychology to this young teen's terrors. Everything that happened to Angie, from her abduction to her recovery was very well thought out and written perfectly to capture her anger and sorrow at her circumstances. I wanted to cheer the fact that Angie wanted to get over her ordeal even if that meant forgetting and moving on with her life. You experience her fear that she thinks she is capable of harming another and when the truth about her childhood abuses becomes clear, you want to weep with her.
This sounds like a great read but one that might be too painful for me...
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