Book Review: The Girls by Chloe Higgins

 The Girls

by

Chloe Higgins

A memoir of family, grief and sexuality

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia

Imprint: Picador

Publication date: 27th August 2019

Genre: Non fiction / Memoir

Pages: 320

RRP: $32.99AU (trade paperback)

Source: Courtesy of the publisher

 

Review: The Girls

When Chloe was seventeen she and her mother stayed home, so she could study for HSC exams, whilst her father took her two younger sisters on a ski trip. On the way back from the trip the car was involved in an accident and burst into flames. Both the sisters were killed.

The Girls is what followed, for Chloe, after that fatal day.

 

I find it very hard to review memoirs, especially those that involve grief and mental illness as I've never had this extreme level of grief.  

 

I appreciated that Chloe was candid in her writing. It is no use writing a memoir if you are only going to write the good stuff and gloss over the bad. It's all included; the drugs, the sex and the bouts of depression.

 

The words flow and her writing is easy to read even though the content is tough.

The story jumps around a lot in time and sometimes I found the time stamp hard to figure out.

I am glad writing this book has helped Chloe work through her own grief and by the end of the book I was pleased she was starting to heal.

My rating 4 / 5  ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Challenges: TBR challenge

                    Non-fiction challenge