(This review can be found on my blog The (Mis)Adventures of a Twenty-Something Year Old Girl in September).


Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley was a book that I was dying to read. It was at the top of my TBR pile, so I was thrilled when I discovered that my local library had it. This turned out to be a fascinating read.

I'm not really a fan of the title. Yes, the main character is called Pretty Girl by her captor and at least one of her alters, but that's it. I, personally, think Gone Girl or some other title would've been better.

I do like the cover. I love how it shows Angie walking out of a cabin in the woods which ties in with the story. That cabin, as well as being real, is also symbolic.

I thought the author did an excellent job with making Angie's world come alive. Liz Coley wrote each alter well enough that they actually came across as being a different person with their own personality. The setting was fantastic too.

The pacing was fantastic! I pretty much breezed through this book in one day. It was held my attention the whole time, and I found it super interesting!

I thought the plot of this book would mostly focus on Angie's kidnapping, but it focuses mainly on her Dissociative Identity Disorder. While we do learn about Angie's kidnapping and everything that happened, we learn it through each of her alters. The plot focuses on how Angie deals which each alter more than anything.

The characters are written very richly. Angie is a broken girl, and I ended up feeling like I wanted to protect her. There were some times when I felt really annoyed with her like when she wouldn't tell people certain key elements of what had happened to her. On one hand, I realize that she was kind of scared, but in one scene, she doesn't tell her mom something simply because she's angry at her. Now, all of this could probably be explained since she's been abused since she was 13, but it still just annoyed me. Overall, Angie is a great character. As I've said before, even her alters have personalities of her own, and the author does a great job at conveying that these alters are supposed to be their own person so to speak. Even the minor characters are done well such as Abraim. Abraim seemed like such a sweet guy and very accepting.

The dialogue was easy to understand although at some points, I felt as if Angie was older then 16. There is some swearing in this book if that's not your thing.

Overall, Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley is an enjoyable book. I found it fascinating to read about Dissociative Identity Disorder as well as trying to solve Angie's kidnapping.

I'd recommend this book to those aged 16 (due to language and themes) who are interested in mental health as well as mysteries.

I'd give Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley a 4.5 out of 5. ( )

ÁNGELA DESAPARECE Y AL CABO DE TRES AÑOS REAPARECE CON AMNESIA DE ESE TIEMPO. TIENE UNAS HORRIBLES CICATRICES EN MUÑECAS Y TOBILLOS. EN SU MENTE SE HAN CREADO VARIAS IDENTIDADES QUE VAN AFLORANDO CON AYUDA DE UNA PSICÓLOGA. ( )

Angie disparue depuis 3 ans retourne à la maison. Après plusieurs rencontres avec une psychiatre, elle se rend compte qu’elle a plusieurs personnalités, qu’elle a été enlevée, a eu en enfant et réussit à se débarrasser de ses autres personnalités ( )

mind blowing. ( )

The book begins at the moment Angie is captured, then catapults you three years into the future. Just like Angie you have no clue what is going on or what exactly happened. On top of that there is a second narrator who isn't identified but who is pretty creepy. I didn't recall reading the summary of Pretty Girl-13 so I had completely forgotten that this book dealt with alter personalities. The way the narration was written I thought for sure that Angie had at some point been abducted by aliens and now shared her body with one or many of her captors. The truth is still pretty darn creepy.

Angie slowly begins to unravel what she experienced the last three years as she meets each of her alters during therapy. Just when you think you have met all of the alters there are more. As crazy as this sounds, I think if something this traumatic happened to me I would prefer to have all these alter egos guarding various parts of the experience. It just seems to make the whole situation much more manageable in my mind, in that you can deal with each aspect one at a time instead of having everything that happened stuck in your mind all the time.

My one issue with this book is that it wasn't enough for Angie to have just been abducted for three years. On top of that she had to deal with another traumatic experience with a family member that she had repressed her entire life. That just felt unnecessary and over-the-top for me. It just seemed like Angie couldn't catch a break and the author was trying to shove as much drama into the story as possible.

Overall, the twists are pretty predictable but I still enjoyed myself. It definitely creeped me out and it made me want to learn more about these types of coping mechanisms and multiple personalities in general. ( )