Book ~ "Those Girls" (2015) Chevy Stevens

From Goodreads ~ Life has never been easy for the three Campbell sisters. Jess, Courtney and Dani live on a remote ranch in Western Canada where they work hard and try to stay out of the way of their father’s fists. 

One night, a fight gets out of hand and the sisters are forced to go on the run, only to get caught in an even worse nightmare when their truck breaks down in a small town. Events spiral out of control and a chance encounter with the wrong people leaves them in a horrific and desperate situation. They are left with no choice but to change their names and create new lives.

 Eighteen years later, they are still trying to forget what happened that summer when one of the sisters goes missing and they are pulled back into their past. 

This time there’s nowhere left to run. 

It's 1997 and Dani, Courtney and Jess are teenage sisters living in rural British Columbia.  Their mother is dead and their father works three weeks away and is home for one.  When he is home, he is drunk and abusive.  Something happens one night that brings things to a head.  The girls, fearing they will be put in a foster home, they take off and head to Vancouver.  Along the way, their truck breaks down in a small town.  They hook up with the wrong people for help and things get a lot worse.

It's now 2015 and as Dallas, Crystal and Jamie, the sisters are living in Vancouver along with Jamie's teenage daughter, Skylar.  Dallas and Jamie have settled into steady jobs and Crystal flits from one job to another and from one man to another.  None of them have forgotten their life-changing experiences.  In fact, one of the sisters heads back to seek revenge which starts everything in motion again.

This is the fifth book I've read by this author and it was really intense.  It's written in first person perspective from Jess/Jamie's and Skylar's point of view ... it alternates by sections and chapters but they are labeled so you know whose voice it is.  As a head's up, there is swearing, graphic violence and sexual abuse ... I found it a bit too violent for my liking.  It was fairly predictable in some spots.

When they were young, the sisters were naïve and made some dumb mistakes that got them into a lot of trouble.  Eighteen years later, they are still making dumb and dangerous mistakes when they should know better since they knew what/who they were dealing with.  Though Skylar loves her mother and her aunts, she knows they are keeping things from her and she doesn't like it.  She too makes dumb mistakes ... I can't believe that she was as naïve as she was, especially considering she grew up around a boxing gym with some rough characters.