#BookReview ‘Girls Of Little Hope’ by Sam Beckbessinger and Dale Halvorsen

About the book…

A chilling and eerie tale of monsters, teen angst and small-town America for fans of Stranger Things, The Thing, and the 1990s

Three girls went into the woods. Only two came back, covered in blood and with no memory of what happened. Or did they?

Being fifteen is tough, tougher when you live in a boring-ass small town like Little Hope, California (population 8,302) in 1996. Donna, Rae and Kat keep each other sane with the fervour of teen girl friendships, zine-making and some amateur sleuthing into the town’s most enduring mysteries: a lost gold mine, and why little Ronnie Gaskins burned his parents alive a decade ago.

Their hunt will lead them to a hidden cave from which only two of them return alive. Donna the troublemaker can’t remember anything. Rae seems to be trying to escape her memories of what happened, while her close-minded religious family presses her for answers. And Kat? Sweet, wannabe writer Kat who rebelled against her mom’s beauty pageant dreams by getting fat? She’s missing. Dead. Or terribly traumatised, out there in the woods, alone.

As the police circle and Kat’s frantic mother Marybeth starts doing some investigating of her own, Rae and Donna will have to return to the cave where they discover a secret so shattering that no-one who encounters it will ever be the same.

My thanks to the lovely people at Titan Books for my gifted review copy of ‘Girls Of Little Hope’ by Dale Halvorsen and Sam Beckbessinger which is out today from all good book shops!

It came with two lovely little badges and a Magpie ‘zine ( which makes sense if you have read the book)

I bloody loved this book.

It’s one of those things where you read the synopsis, and just feel deep in your bones you know you will love it because a) the 90’s were when I was really coming into who I was as a person b) I LOVE Stranger Things and The Thing  c)it’s a Titan Book and I absolutely rave about them a lot, if you hadn’t already noticed d) the girls on the milk carton on the cover. All I needed to know.

And it did not let my expectations down in any way shape or form. It begins at what one might think is the end, when 2 of the 3 missing girls reappear and are subject to a physical and psychological grilling.

The town of Little Hope is so boring, so mundane that one of the girls even opines about why a police station is necessary. Nothing has happened since that time Ronnie Gaskins killed his parents and before that is anyone else’s guess.

But there is an alleged gold mine in the woods which surround the town and this could be the ticket out of there for 3 young women desperate to take control of the narrative of their lives, fed up of it being determined by a patriarchal society that sees them and rejects them for all the flaws which make them so endearing to each other.

You have Donna,endlessly derided as the daughter of a single father, who wears her sudden onset of physical maturity as a massive 2 fingers up to conservative society-she has a woman’s body and is damned if she will feel shamed.

Then there is Tammy-Rae, the daughter of a conservative horse breeder, ridiculously well off but emotionally poor. Constantly made to feel like a failure, her growing feelings towards her own sex squashed because it is wrong and ungodly. Except she is living with a horrendous father and a mother who self medicates with alcohol. And Tammy-Rae punishes herself for not being the perfect daughter by taking it out on her body.

Lastly, there is Kate, an ex-beauty queen whose body is used as a weapon against her mother, she has put on weight to push herself out of a circuit which prides itself on valuing external appearances far more than what is on the inside. A deeply loving and self aware young woman, she seeks to exist beyond the confines of her mother’s expectations and hopes that she will do better than her.

All 3 have parents trying to live through them, and as they battle to find out who and where they are in a 90’s conservative American town, listening to Riot Girl bands -the song titles from some AMAZING groups form the headings of each chapter and make an all round top tier Spotify playlist !-and can only truly be themselves around each other. The girls have no expectations and do not try to live through their friends, they just are.

And it’s so difficult to express just how important this is to have even one person in your life who you can let those barriers down around without the anticipation of being hurt.

The narrative is told from Donna and Rae’s perspective as well as Kate’s mother, Marybeth, who is desperate to find out where her daughter is. Kate’s diary provides her take on things and in her physical absence from the book, this creates a sense of mourning and loss in this reader which is neatly juxtaposed with her mother’s quest to bring her daughter home.

And in the absence of a reasonable explanation, stories and theories arise left right and center, whilst the truth of what has happened, and is continuing to happen, is far more bizarre and unreal than anyone could ever imagine.

This book completely compelled me, swept me away from the very title-these girls had little hope of ever escaping from this town, and it appears the rest of the town had given up on it too-to the cover design to the million and one small details sprinkled throughout the text which bring it to life.

It is the perfect summer read, pulls no punches when it comes to full on body horror and I am just so very keen to see what these authors do next.

About the authors…

Sam Beckbessinger is the author of the bestselling ‘Manage Your Money Like A Fucking Grownup’ and the novel Girls of Little Hope (co-authored with Dale Halvorsen). Her interactive story about climate change, ‘Survive The Century’, was featured in New Scientist and Gizmodo. She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University, writes kids’ TV and picture books, once wrote for Marvel, and is weirdly obsessed with spreadsheets. She grew up on a farm near Durban with a pet donkey named Mr Magoo, but now lives in London

Links-https://www.sambeckbessinger.com/

Twitter @beckbessinger @TitanBooks 

Dale Halvorsen (aka Joey Hi-Fi) is a writer, internationally award-winning book cover designer, graphic designer, and Illustrator. #LivingTheSlashieLIfe

He dreams of writing more books as opposed to just putting covers on them.

He is also proudly autistic.

Links-https://www.dalehalvorsen.com/

Twitter @JoeyHiFi