Hilary Faktor’s Pretty Bird is a thriller about a woman who escaped from an artist’s cult as a child, but her past comes back to haunt her as an adult. Maeve has a good job and family (husband, daughter and son). Her world unravels when she and her husband see a photographic exhibit in a gallery that came from the artist’s cult’s home base, a place called Paradise. Maeve calls a reporter and blows the whistle, but it comes at a cost as the cult leader finds her and tracks down her family.
This debut novel is creepy and tense throughout. The cult is less about art as it’s about how a group of people can lose a society when a few bullies mischievously take control. We follow Maeve, who as a child was named Robyn, through her formative years in Paradise. As a deadly man named Pierce takes control, Paradise becomes more and more harsh. Finally, when Paradise becomes too much for Robyn, she decides to escape. But at what cost?
This is an impressive debut, well-written with passages that read like bestseller thrillers. Maeve / Robyn is a sympathetic character, and Faktor successfully builds the suspense required to make the Paradise sequences gripping. The book also details what is happening to Maeve in the present, although those passages can be abrupt. A final twist at the end is commendable. As with all great surprises, all the foreshadowing is there. If readers catch onto what is really going on as Maeve escapes, they will dread the outcome. Robyn’s fate delivers an emotional punch to the reader at the end of the novel. While this reviewer disagreed with some of Maeve’s decisions about keeping her family safe, it was done all in the name of making the ending more exciting.
Pretty Bird is a thrilling first novel by Hilary Faktor who keeps the suspense level high. The movement between past and present, giving the reader foresight, is the right technique that propels this escape and retribution novel forward.