This was my second read by Megan, and after the awesomeness that was ETHIC, I was expecting amazing things. I was aware that it might not be an out and out horror, and more police procedural but still NEEDED to read it. It’s a weird thing being a reader because a lot of the time, for me at least, we stick to the same (safe) couple of authors and just read their work. For me its always been Laymon, Smith and Masterson in the horror genre. Yet when I find a new author I like, I then completely exhaust their entire back catalogue, and that is the same vibe I get with Megan's work. I just want to read it all. That’s a powerful place for an author to be in. Anyway, I began the novel and was hooked from the first chapter as we head straight into the plot at a crime scene. I don’t want to give too much away suffice to say the novel follows three detectives, two senior and one junior, plus the local pathologist, in a small town by the name of Whitebranch as they try and capture a serial killer. Now I love reading about serial killers, I always have, and to find that this novel also looked at things from the killers perspective was a complete treat as Megan lets us into the thought process of her villain.
The characters, ALL OF THEM, are believable and honest, even those we see for just one scene or a couple of lines, and as the novel progresses with more bodies piling up, it feels as though you are IN Whitebranch yourself as a resident, and the fear and concern of the locals and the detectives begins to affect you. As a father of two daughters, I was wincing as I read, the thought of how there were/are actually killers like the villain in this novel, who prey upon the vulnerable. It’s a terrifying thought. The descriptions of the town, the crimes scenes and just about everything else are almost cinematic, and it all feels so real, so vivid that it blew me away. I cried at several points, the only book to ever have had me doing so, and I found myself rereading several pages in the hope that perhaps what had happened might change but of course, it couldn’t possibly do so. The plot was as tight as a drum, and so well crafted that it made me question my own ability as an author in the face of such magnificence. I tried to write the day after finishing Quiet, Pretty Things and had to stop, feeling that I was just writing fan fiction for friends. That’s how skilled an author Megan Stockton is. The horror elements of this novel, when they arrive, arrive hard. I spent the night after finishing reading this book restless and picturing the horror aspect in my room, and was completely ill at ease. Add this to the raw brutality of the murders spread through this novel and it is clear that it belongs in the horror section, to me at least. Was there anything wrong with the book? It ended is the obvious answer. I need more of Whitebranch, and these characters. I need more of their lives and what came next. But I also want to read anything that Megan writes. She has mad skills and is destined for the big time. And I will be applauding her well-deserved rise to fame, every step of the way. Quiet, Pretty Things, is the best novel that I have read in my forty-eight years of life, and I will be telling anyone who will listen just how amazing it is. 5/5. Would thoroughly recommend.
https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Pretty-Things-Megan-Stockton/dp/B09SC1PBPC