According to Goodreads, I tried to read this book back in December 2016 and since I had marked it with two stars it meant I did not finish it. I don't fully remember, but since I still had it on my kindle, I decided to give it another go, and this time I did manage to read and finish it and enjoyed it. Pretty Is starts with two adults one is Chloe Savage who is now an actress and the other Lucy Ledger who is a mystery author of a book called Deep in the Woods. The book has now been adapted into a movie and Chloe Savage is to play the female cop, Mandy. As she reads the script, the story sounds familiar to what she went through with another girl in the 90's when she was 12 years old. Chloe tracks down the author and discovers it is none other than Lois and it seems though that someone is now wanting to pick up from where their kidnapper ended when two new girls both aged 12 years go missing from the film set of Deep in the Woods. Back in the 90's Chloe was known as Carly May and Lucy as Lois and one summer they were targeted and kidnapped and kept in the woods. Their ordeal finished when their kidnapper was killed. Now with their story out in the public, the girls are about to be reunited but if they aren't careful, they may end up dead as someone isn't happy about the book being published and made into a film. Pretty Is was a slow-paced abduction mystery and features past/present moments and the aftermath of what Lois and Carly experienced when they returned home and the directions their lives took them

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Lois and Carly-May are just twelve years old when they're abducted, driven across the country, and imprisoned in a remote, isolated hunting lodge for two months. That summer, under the watchful gaze of their kidnapper, they form a bond which will never be broken...
Decades later, both Lois and Carly-May have built new lives and identities for themselves. Lois, a professor of literature, is shaken when an obsessive and disturbing student begins to remind her of the man who kidnapped her, a man she saw shoot himself on the porch twenty years before. Writing gives her a chance to make sense of her life and control her own destiny, albeit on paper.
Out in LA, Carly-May is drinking too much and watching her beauty-queen looks fade, clinging to the last remnants of a once-promising career as an actress. When she reads a shockingly familiar screenplay, she warily she takes a role she knows is based on events from her own life.

So, what was that, exactly? I am really confused about what I just read. Let me see if I can lay it out, for my own thoughts anyway:

1) 2 young girls were kidnapped. Sort of. They got into a car with a man without a question or a fight.
2) Kidnapper treats them well, doesn't harm them. They don't try to escape. No motivations for the kidnapping.
(Sounds realistic so far...)
3) 20 years later, one of the girls writes a book about her experience. Guess what? The other girl is an actress, who happens to land the role on the movie based on that book.
4) Girls come face-to-face for the first time in 20 years.
5) Throw in lots of self-loathing and pity-parties, and you get this book...

The so-called suspense of the boy who is acting like their kidnapper (who, actually, really didn't do anything) is lost in the misery and boredom this book puts you through.

Never again, thank you very much!


Paul
ARH