Such a Pretty Smile
by Kristi DeMeester
Narrated by Khristine Hvam
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
This book is angry in the best way — a horror story that makes you feel the rage before you feel the fear.
- Great if you want: feminist horror with real bite, not just aesthetics
- Listening experience: tense and unsettling; dual timeline builds dread slowly
- Narration: Hvam handles the teenage and adult voices with quiet intensity
- Skip if: you want plot-driven horror over atmosphere and theme
About This Audiobook
Such a Pretty Smile is a horror novel that alternates between two timelines: 2019, where thirteen-year-old Lila is haunted by something that offers her a voice and then punishes her for using it, and 2004, where her mother Caroline becomes increasingly consumed by the sounds of phantom dogs that no one else can hear. Both timelines circle the same entity — something the novel calls The Cur — that hunts girls who refuse to be quiet. DeMeester writes Southern Gothic horror with feminist urgency, making the monster a manifestation of real institutional violence.
Khristine Hvam narrates with the intensity and precision the dual-timeline structure demands — her voices for the teenage Lila and the adult Caroline are distinct and credible. At ten hours the audiobook moves between horror and domestic realism with the control DeMeester's construction requires, and Hvam's performance carries the novel's anger and grief in equal measure.
