Alright, so get a load of this: The Shining Girls is about a drifter named Harper Curtis that stumbles upon a house that allows him to travel to different points in time. However, it just so happens that Harper is a murdering psycho. So now we’ve got this guy with the ability to jump through time killing women that “shines” to him.
No, not like The Shining shining. They don’t speak to him telepathically or anything. He just sees certain girls with this shining quality to them. These are girls with a bright future and the ability to change things I’m willing to bet. Harper, being the guy he is, wants to snuff these girls out. But he has game plan. He links all these girls together with objects from different time periods. So he’ll give a girl in the 70’s a little toy that was made in the 80’s. Or maybe he’ll plant a baseball card that he got from some victim and plant it on a new girl that has no interest in baseball. He then stitches all these girls’ lives together by these artifacts.
Okay, so this presents a problem. How do you catch a killer that is able to kill someone then enter a portal and vanish through time? Well, the book is also about how one of his victim’s survives and tries to track him down. And that’s where the really interesting part comes in.
It’s cool enough that there’s a story about a time-traveling murderer but what really grabs you in is just how the hell he’s going to get caught. It’s basically The Time Traveler’s Wife mixed in with a serial killer.
Man, this book really makes me want a time traveling house so I can jump through time and impress my girlfriend.
“Merry Christmas, this is called an mp3 player.”
“What’s it do?”
“You know that CD wallet in your car that holds 20 CDs?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, this will replace that.”
“Oh, so I put albums on it? How many can it fit?”
“Uh, basically every album you’ve ever heard in your entire life.”
If you’re not into reading books (then I don’t know why you’re reading this) you can always wait for the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company just bought the rights for the film adaption. So you’ve got that going for you in the future to look forward to.
