Review - The Furies by Katie Lowe

The Furies by Katie Lowe

You'd kill to be one of them.

1998. A sixteen-year-old girl is found dead on school property, dressed in white and posed on a swing. No known cause of death.

Four girls know what happened.

They've kept their silence.

Until now.

I loved this book.

It has an ethereal, almost erotic, definitely slightly surreal beauty to it.

It's reminiscent of Picnic at Hanging Rock and Virgin Suicides. We know there's a tragedy coming from the opening, the tragic, cinematic beauty of the dead girl on the swing, but we don't know exactly what it is or how we're going to get there. The characters bear similarities too, beautiful young girls who just don't fit into the world around them.

There's a beauty and there's a horror to it all. I loved the characters of the four girls, who all felt vibrant and real, powerful and vulnerable. The men in the story are generally pretty awful, undeserving of the girls' beauty, and richly deserving their vengeance. I loved the supernatural elements blended into the contemporary setting.

The Furies is not a comfortable read. The events of the novel made me feel distinctly uneasy and looming over the whole story is that one image of the girl on the swing. I'm not sure if the conclusion quite lived up to the promise of the rest of the book though. I think I was maybe expecting something more, something bigger, but it definitely had a heartbreaking emotion of its own.

I'm giving The Furies four and a half moons.

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The Furies is published by Harper Collins. It is available now in hardback. I received a review copy via Netgalley in return for an honest review