More and more I find myself becoming disenchanted with the horror genre as a whole—as it all often turns out to be the same trite, sadistic, and mindless nonsense that feeds the angst ridden audience who reads such works—including myself.
However, finally as it seems, I’ve come across a novel that has a little more class, a little more character, and a lot more substance than many a book I’ve read in an exceedingly long time.
Good Girls by Glen Hirshberg is the second novel in a trilogy of books titled The Motherless Children. While the this may be part of a book trilogy the title is advertised as a stand alone work. You, supposedly, do not need to read the previous novel, Motherless Child, to understand this title.
I will get to the validity of this later on in the review.
First, a little about the novel itself. Good Girls is a dark tale about a strange man known only as The Whistler who wreaks havoc among those he encounters. The narrative switches between multiple characters, the main ones being Rebecca, Jess, and Aunt Sally.
Rebecca is a college student who works at the campus crisis call center. She makes it her responsibility to care of others, having been a foster child and being cared for by foster parents her whole life.
Jess is an older woman who has just come out of hell, a hell that I believe began in the previous novel. Jess takes the remnants of her life--after having lost almost everything to the horrors of The Whistler--and moves forward into life.
Aunt Sally and The Whistler are vicious hunters, undead monsters, trying to track down and kill Jess and the final members of her family.
Ultimately, the novel is a grim and enjoyable take on the vampire lore--a welcome entry in a market of romanticized vampires. Ultimately, the novel hearkens back to great vampire novels of the past including Stephen King's Salem's Lot and even the brilliant Dracula by Bram Stoker's.
Good Girls manages to take some very heavy and dark topics and apply them to a collection of very real, very engaging characters. Each of the characters, even the horrific monsters, seem to have some element of humanity about them. This is what sets Good Girls apart. The story is supported far more by the characters themselves, and their humanity, rather than gore.
While Good Girls has its fair amount of gore--well written and visceral gore at that--it ultimately leans on the characters and their choices for substance. Rebecca is by far the best of the characters and is also the most relatable. I often found myself hurrying to get to her sections of the book, wondering what ultimately would happen to her. She is the driving force of the work. The prose in her chapters is also the most natural to follow as a reader.
The other characters also support the story well. However, there seems to be confusion early on in the novel when reading these character's sections. I realized about 4 chapters in that a few of these characters had previously appeared in the the Motherless Child and were therefore carrying on from the events therein.
So, after having read this novel (without reading the first) I would encourage interested readers to go ahead and read the first novel Motherless Child before reading Good Girls. While it may not be necessary, I think that Motherless Child would most likely add a depth of story development that will only enhance the experience already existent in Good Girls.