I've read other books by Jess Lourey, namely her Rom-Com mystery series, which had a serious mystery in each book, but also had a fair amount of comic relief. It was this experience that prompted me to pick up this novel. Whoo boy, is this a different kind of read!
The law might not recognize it, but fifteen's a girl and sixteen a woman, and you get no map from one land to the next. They air-drop you in, booting a bag of Kissing Potion lip gloss and off-the-shoulder blouses after you. As you're plummeting, trying to release your parachute and grab for that bag at the same time, they holler out you're pretty, like they're giving you some sort of gift, some vital key but really, it's meant to distract you from yanking your cord.
Girls who land broken are easy prey.
And who among us isn't just a little broken? Everyone who thinks that small towns are safe, idyllic places to raise children should read books like this one. (I should know, I went to school in a small town and watched similar things. It was all part of living in the 1970s). Are the girls in the title to be found in the quarry on the outskirts of town or are they the quarry of predatory men? Both, y'all, BOTH.
Part of the reason that this book spooked me so badly is that I am exactly the same age as the main character, Heather. I was just as naïve as her too. I lived in a rural district, eleven miles from town, and that distance kept me out of much of the trouble that small town girls can encounter. (As a result, my narrow escapes happened once I started university and was separate from my family, making them more panic inducing.) I found I had to take frequent reading breaks because the novel connected me so strongly with my young adult fears. The 70s may have seen the beginnings of feminism, but men still very much inhabited the authoritative offices of society and many of them saw nothing wrong with rewarding themselves for their hard work with women, the younger the better. Just listen to the music of that decade and you'll hear all about “sweet sixteen” and the whole “you belong to me” idea. Women were prizes, not people.
Jess Lourey has seen some of this too, although she's about a decade younger than me. Her introduction talks about serial killers who haunted the Minnesota community where she grew up. As she says, they were far from geniuses, but they knew how to manipulate young women who were insecure about their looks or their social status or desperate to feel grown up and therefore easily convinced that sex would give them sophistication.
At any rate, this is very well written. I found the plot tension excruciating, but part of that may be my personal history speaking. Although I usually don't love endings that tie up with a bow, in this instance it felt right and comforting. But I will be much more careful to vet the blurb on future Lourey novels, I don't know if I could withstand another story like this one.
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