Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.
What happened to the past three years of her life?
Angie doesn't know.
But there are people who do — people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?
4 out of 5
Angie shows up at her house after having been missing for 3 years but, for her, no time has passed. She doesn't know where she was or who she was with. To help her, her parents send her to a therapist. She discovers that she has DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and her alters have been in control for her missing years.
I love reading about DID. I have quite a few books on the subject... most case studies like Sybil and even some clinical books. I'm always interested in giving fiction about DID a chance.
Pretty Girl-13 combines the DID with the more recently well known Elizabeth Smart or Jaycee Dugard style story of escaping from an abductor. And really, if you know these stories and about DID, there really aren't any surprises in this book.
Going into detail will give away a lot, so I won't do that. I will say, though, that I was not surprised by anything that happened... even the final revelation at the end. The only thing I was really surprised by was the initial treatment that didn't seek to integrate the alters and the fact that the doctor suggested it.
Despite knowing where the book was going, I enjoyed it. It does take overlooking the fact that therapy, especially this kind of therapy, takes more than a few months... but this is fiction and I accepted that. I would definitely recommend this book if you are interested in this type of story. There are not a lot of gory details but it does involve kidnapping and abuse so if you are sensitive to that, you might want to skip it.
*Picture and Description from Goodreads
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