'There’s something out there that’s killing. Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don’t know when to shut up.
'2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can’t share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she’s seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother—the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorised by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice—until she is punished for using it.
'2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape—both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiancé is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waves her “problem” away with pills. But Caroline’s past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can’t understand.
'As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty.'
Such a Pretty Smile tells the story of a mother and her daughter, Caroline and Lila, and how their lives forever change when a series of killings begin to plague their lives.
Lila is young, barely in her teens and trying to find her place at her new school. She's never really been one of the popular girls, and most of the time feels like a bit of an outsider. Fortunately for her her best friend, Macie, is popular enough for the both of them, and has elevated Lila's status somewhat. Unfortunately, though, Lila is secretly in love with Macie, and desperately wants to tell her how she feels. She's barely keeping her life together with her secret love, and her father being focused on his new baby with his wife across the country, but when a series of killings of young girls her age begins to happen it starts to shift her careful existence.
The killer, called The Cur, is taking young girls and leaving them broken and slashed apart, their genitals mutilated, their bodies almost looking like they've been feasted on. Everyone is on edge; especially her mother, Caroline. Lila learns that her mother has a connection to The Cur in her past, something that has left her shaken. But Caroline doesn't want to share her secrets, and Lila is left on her own to figure out what the strange visions she's seeing, and the sounds of howling she keeps hearing means. As Lila begins to change and act more aggressive, Caroline fears that she may soon lose her daughter.
Such a Pretty Smile is a book that is filled with atmosphere. It likes to take its time and build tension over the course of the book, only occasionally giving the audience a break be either showing us a moment of happiness, or by going full horror. Kristi DeMeester has crafted a story that just keeps on building and building, creating this huge sense of dread in the reader as we learn more.
Whilst the story is a horror thriller it's also a mystery. When the book begins The Cur has already claimed a number of victims, and tensions are high amongst the affected community. But we don't know who he is, or why he's doing these terrible things. As the book goes on we start to get hints that there's more to this than a simple string of killings; though this book being sold as a horror story does kind of give that away before you even begin. But, we realise that strange things are afoot when Lila starts to see a mysterious figure watching her from the darkness, cold, yellow eyes staring at her, and the sound of wolves howling in the night.
As things progress Lila starts to act strange, and whilst those around her blame it on mental health issues, it's clear that there's something exerting some kind of influence over her; getting in her head and trying to make her act differently. She becomes vicious, downright nasty towards the people in her life. Whatever is out there watching her has plans for her.
But the mystery deepens when we flash back to events fifteen years prior, when her mother was living in New Orleans. Dealing with the impending death of her father, and having to put her art career on hold in order to try and find work that will give her enough money to pay for her fathers hospice care, she almost doesn't pay attention to the killings that are happening in the city. A killer called The Cur. When her father lets slip in his pain and drug induced state that something happened to Caroline as a girl she begins to look into her past, and learns that she went missing during a spate of killings when she was a girl; and that she was the only girl to return alive.
Caroline begins to experience the same kinds of visions and hallucinations that her daughter will in the future, and starts trying to dig into why. These two stories, unfolding at the same time for the reader build upon each other, giving hints to us, who can experience both, yet keeping things from both Lila and Caroline who never really learn enough to figure everything out.
And this is how much of the book manages to keep you hooked, by giving you a mystery that has no rational solution, no grounding in reality. We know that there has to be other forces at work here, and that something truly dark and evil is behind things. And then the book builds to a conclusion that is horrific in a lot of ways. And because DeMeester spends so long building up both characters, allowing the reader to get into their heads and see what makes them tick, when it comes to a scenario where there's no guarantee either of them will live through it, it makes for a tense conclusion.
My one criticism of the book, however, would be the very end. I won't spoil what happens, but over the course of the book we've been given hints as to what's happening and why. There are theories and possible reasons presented that lead you to a point where you can come to a pretty solid conclusion. But then a new character turns up for the last dozen pages to outline exactly what it all is, why it happened, why these girls were targeted, what it all means. It's almost like the author decided that either the audience wasn't going to be able to figure it all out themselves, or they didn't want people to come to any conclusion other than the one they had in mind. I felt like this choice kind of let the book down somewhat. It was a great book, and it got its message across well and was clever enough to not need to hold your hand along the way, then it went and gave you all the explanations.
The very end aside, Such a Pretty Smile was an enjoyable and at times disturbing book. It messes with your head and plays with expectations. The characters feel pretty decently crafted and aren't just two-dimensional monster fodder. It has some dark and twisted imagery, and I loved how its themes were tied to feminism, to the violence that people experience at the hands of the patriarchy, and how certain expectations and demands are made of women and femme people. If you're looking for something a bit different than the normal horror book Such a Pretty Smile is worth considering.
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