Ugly Girls

Summary

With Ugly Girls,Lindsay Hunter delivers a powerful, voice-driven novel with the breakneck pacethat people have come to expect from her.

The Chicago Tribunecalled her stories “Mesmerizing…visceral…exquisite.” The Boston Globe called them “incredibly urgent.” And now we have thegreat pleasure of Lindsay Hunter’s searing, poignant, hilarious first novel.

Ugly Girls, at itscore, is about the friendship between two girls, Perry and Baby Girl, and howthat friendship descends into chaos, taking their world and the identities theyhold dear with it. Their friendship is woven from the threads of never-endingdares and the struggle with power; their loyalty, something they attend to likea pet but forget to feed. Ugliness is something they trade between themselves,one ugly on the outside and one on the inside.

While the girls spend their nights sneaking out, stealingcars for joyrides, and eating french fries at the twenty-four-hour Denny’s,danger lurks. Jamey is pining after Perry from behind the computer screeninside his mother’s trailer. He’s been watching the girls for a while, onFacebook and in person—though they’ve never seen him in the flesh—posing asa boy from a high school a couple of neighborhoods over. When they finally do meetJamey face-to-face, they quickly realize he’s far from a nice high school boy,and the girls will do whatever is necessary to protect themselves.