The Girls

A Novel

By: Emma Cline

Narrated by: Cady McClain

THE INSTANT BESTSELLER • An indelible portrait of girls, the women they become, and that moment in life when everything can go horribly wrong

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, Entertainment Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle, Financial Times, Esquire, Newsweek, Vogue, Glamour, People, The Huffington Post, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Time Out, BookPage, Publishers Weekly, Slate

Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence.

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award • Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Emma Cline—One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists

Praise for The Girls

“Spellbinding . . . a seductive and arresting coming-of-age story.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Extraordinary . . . Debut novels like this are rare, indeed.”—The Washington Post

“Hypnotic.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Gorgeous.”—Los Angeles Times

“Savage.”—The Guardian

“Astonishing.”—The Boston Globe

“Superbly written.”—James Wood, The New Yorker

“Intensely consuming.”—Richard Ford

“A spectacular achievement.”—Lucy Atkins, The Times

“Thrilling.”—Jennifer Egan

“Compelling and startling.”—The Economist

So disappointed

I kept waiting for more - the words were written beautifully but the story just never got there. The ending was nothing.

Memorizing

Loved this book. Takes place in the counterculture era and so entertaining and a good laid back "read"

excellent

an excellent book that you can't stop. loved it. A must read and we'll read

Fictionalization version of real events?

I need to preface this by saying that I was a criminology major and ingested every bit of material about Charles Manson I could get my hands on. This book is kind of a rip off in my mind of what happened in the Manson family right down to the cult living on a ranch, and a murder in the fancy part of town. I might have enjoyed it more had I not known so much about that story. The narrator is kind of a peripheral member of the cult so that did provide an interesting perspective. I felt that the Author may have gone back and added more flowery descriptors than necessary, but it was an entertaining
listen just the same.

Meh

Wasn't that interesting to me. Not what I expected and didn't keep my attention well.