Book Review: The Girls by Emma Cline

I've wanted to read this book for a while. I saw it described as a story about girls that get caught up in a Charles Manson-like...

I've wanted to read this book for a while. I saw it described as a story about girls that get caught up in a Charles Manson-like cult in the summer of 1969. This immediately sounded like something I'd be interested in. I've always had an interest in serial killers and cults (gruesome, I know).
I went last week and renewed my library card and paid off my fines (from about six years ago). I then looked and looked for The Girls. The local library is connected to a state-wide system where you can basically check out books from any library in the system and return the books at any other library in the system. When I asked, most of the libraries in the area were out of the book, and the hold had the books out until mid-November (what?). Luckily, one small library (the one about a mile from my house) actually had a copy. So I snatched that baby up.
I read the book in about a day, but only because I had so much hope that it would get better. But it didn't. The novel was divided into four parts, which were a mixture of present-day and 1969. Even after I finished the book, I never quite figured out the purpose of the present-day portions of the book. (If anyone's read this book and has some insight here that I overlooked, please tell me.) Those present-day sections really seemed to have no relevance to the story or add to the main story line.
The story was interesting. It wasn't a terrible book, but I really felt like I would have liked to better if it had just stuck to the 1969-portion of the story line. I was also upset about the character development. I felt like I knew the main character (Evie) pretty well, but I would have loved to understand the other characters a little better.
Because of those things, I rated the book 3/5 stars on Goodreads. Seriously, I wanted to love this book, but it just didn't live up to the hype.

Have you read this novel by Emma Cline?

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  1. I expected this book to be a lot better than what it was, probably because it was so hyped up that I had inflated expectations. It felt a little bit like a book about nothing and I wish there was more going on. Things got a bit more exciting near the end but I feel like that didn't make up of it.

    1. I'm so glad I'm not the only one to feel that way! I kept waiting for something to happen, but you're right. The climax of the book was at the very end. I feel like it would have been better if Evie had been involved somehow, I guess.