✨Skye✨'s Reviews > Pretty Girl Thirteen

So, I quite liked this one. I really enjoyed the premise and certain aspects of the story. I also had several issues with it.
Pretty Girl 13 begins with a girl finding herself walking home after a camping trip. When she arrives home, her parents are shocked to see her, as it turns out she has been missing for 3 years. Angie has no memory of any of this, and feels that no time has passed.
This is a terrifying story of kidnapping and mental health disorders. Angie's dissociative identity disorder seemed fictionalised and imagined, which makes it all the scarier that this can happen in real life. It was by far the most interesting and intriguing aspect of the story. I can't speak to how realistic the portrayal is, but the medical examinations and treatments she has seem well explained and logical enough. I like the complicated relationship she has with her parents-things aren't all sunshine and fairies when she gets home, and that's so much more realistic than everything becoming normal again. There's a fantastic therapist character in this book, which is refreshing compared to other YA books' portraying mental health professionals as useless.
My issues are probably spoilers, but if I had to summarise them it is simply that there seems to be unnecessary, extraneous plot lines that I didn't feel should have been there. (view spoiler)[ The plot about Angie being molested as a child did not receive enough attention, I felt. We did not see any aftermath of Angie recovering those memories, and after she exposed him it was sort of brushed under the carpet and not thought of again. It seemed like it was there for added drama factor-more sexual abuse does not equal a better portrayal, and I didn't feel it added much to Angie's struggles or her development. I also think the romantic subplots were totally unnecessary to Angie's story of recovery. As much as I like her relationship with Abraim, it wasn't needed. (hide spoiler)]