My sincere thanks to St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to review an ARC of this fantastic, creepy book!

A feminist horror story told across two generations - Such A Pretty Smile focuses on our two main characters with sympathy, love, and fear for what they will face.

On the one hand, we follow lonely teenager Lila as she pines after the object of her unrequited affections while facing the loneliness of being a social outcast. With a distant father and a helicopter mother who is a famous artist to boot, Lila feels alone in the world and adrift in a family history she doesn’t fully understand. Her mother refuses to talk about the past, however Lila is sure something lurks there because when the bodies of young girls start to turn up, her mother’s fear and overbearing parenting increases to unimaginable levels. What is her mother so afraid of? Lila knows her mother suffers from mental illness, and she fears that she will inherit those genes. But is her mother’s reaction a symptom of her illness, or is there truly something to fear out there?

On the other hand, we follow Lila’s mother Caroline before the birth of her daughter. Her beloved father is in hospice care, and in order to pay for his care she has had to sacrifice her artistic pursuits to take a dead end job tutoring the troubled teenage daughter of a wealthy family in more “classical” artistic pursuits than her preferred medium of scavenger sculptures. Caroline’s fiancé Daniel is also an artist, however as she begins to see and hear things that may or may not be there, their relationship becomes strained beyond the normal competitive streak that has always run underneath their love. Daniel’s concern for her seems genuine, but is he more worried about her or how he looks next to a crazy woman? As young girls begin to vanish, Caroline fears what she is seeing is not just a hallucination.

As the two timelines diverge and then meet up again, the reader finds themselves engrossed in not the only plot but the emotions that the characters feel. From the pangs of early girlhood to young womanhood, this book perfectly captures fears that are innate in being a woman while also adding a potentially supernatural evil into the mix. Haunting, touching, and fast paced - I highly recommend this book!

UCH A PRETTY SMILE by Kristi DeMeester would be a great book if you’re just introducing yourself to the horror genre. It’s an awesome dual-timeline thriller-horror. It features a killer that is referred to as THE CUR that masticates its victims similar to a snake and a mother-daughter duo you’ll want to root for.

THE CUR is quite frightening and the whole “killing girls with big mouths who don’t know when to shut up and learn their place”
was a great storyline.

Parts of the book reminded me of Meg Gardiners UNSUB series. But ultimately feel this title felt a bit closer to a YA horror than adult.

The protagonist was young and the themes of the book were centered around using ones voice and learning self power. There was a lot of me screaming

“FUCK YES”

While reading.

A very enjoyable read!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thanks to @stmartinspress for sending this my way in exchange for an honest review!