On first inspection, Evie Boyd could be anyone--a stringy-haired ex-hippie at the grocery store, standing next to the beer case. But her blankness belies an acid-tinged history in an infamous, murderous Northern California cult. As with much of The Girls, things are not what they appear.
Emma Cline's breathless, near-perfect debut begs to be fallen into headlong, like an ill-fated love affair. From page one, when Evie describes her first encounter with the titular girls, the female cult followers who are the group's allure, the novel becomes a compulsive read, with the sort of page turning one often associates with pulpy paperbacks. Flashing between the past (1969) and the near-present, Cline writes beautifully of Evie's immersion, tracing her path from discontented suburban 14-year-old to the cusp of womanhood and wickedness, infusing the story with her own ambiguity. Between sexual awakenings and a newfound feeling of belonging, there are the less savory elements of culthood, all rendered in Cline's unflinching and engaging style.
There is little to say of the plot without revealing the answers to questions deep within the novel, the unknowns that propel it at breakneck speed. Like the charismatic cult at the center of the story, The Girls is the rare book whose magnetism casts a reckless and irresistible spell. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer