Review: "The Girls" by Emma Cline

This is Evie’s story. She is retelling her youth and her history that starts in the summer of 1969 when she is fourteen. She lives in Petaluma, California with her mother who is recently divorced from her father. She is very bored with life and has very little adult supervision or any friends that she feels really close to. She meets Suzanne who appears to fulfill her need for a close friend. Suzanne and the other girls in the group appear wildly exotic. They live on a ranch with a mixture of other youth doing drugs and basically anything they want to. Their leader, Russell, uses these naïve young women to do his bidding, be it stealing, for sex or even murder.

The plot is fast moving and exciting and I didn’t want to put the book down. The author does an excellent job of slowly building the storyline and you want to continue reading to find out how Evie’s story evolves and how she fits into the catastrophic event that affects the rest of the girls. My only disappointment was that more character development of Suzanne and the rest of the girls would have been helpful and given the story great depth.

The warmer weather is fast approaching and this is a great summer beach read. It will keep you turning pages and interested and you will not lose the plot if you need to put it down. I recommend this for older readers because of the adult themes.

I requested and received this book for review from NetGalley.